A California federal judge gave the go-ahead to Apple's $30 million settlement in a lawsuit that accused it of failing to pay thousands of its retail workers for the time taken up by security checks after their official working hours ended.
The settlement was approved by the district judge on Monday.
Thousands of current and former Apple Store employees in California will be getting payouts of up to $1,200 as a result of a class-action lawsuit.
Employees who brought the class action worked at 52 Apple Stores. According to the lawsuit, bag checks should be done within their working hours rather than after they had finished.
The workers were forced to stay inside the store even though they had finished work. The practice of checking bags stopped in 2015.
Apple was accused of breaking California state law by performing the checks outside of work. The tech company told anyone who disagreed with the arrangement that they should leave their bags at home.
In 2015, the US District Court for the Northern District of California decided that the workers could have avoided the searches if they had not brought a bag to work.
The Ninth Circuit decided to consult the California Supreme Court on whether the bag searches should have been done on the clock or in the employees' own time.
The Supreme Court said in 2020 that Apple Store workers were clearly still at the store on Apple's time while waiting for the searches to start.
The court said that the exit searches burden Apple's employees by preventing them from leaving the premises with their personal belongings. The decision should be applied retroactively, leaving Apple with a huge bill.
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