Apple shares details of its $30m back check lawsuit on its website

Apple Store Fifth Avenue New York (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

Apple has added a page to its legal website with links to information about its settlement of a lawsuit related to bag checks.
Apple agreed to pay $29.9 million to employees who had their bags checked at retail stores.
Bag checks were carried out outside of work time.

Apple has added a new page to its legal website on which it offers links to more information about its $29.9 million class-action lawsuit settlement relating to Apple Store bag checks. The new website (opens in new tab) links out to www.AppleBagCheckSettlement.com among other websites.

This all relates to Apple's November settlement after it agreed to pay employees for the time they lost when having their bags searched after finishing work. 14,000 employees will receive a payout based on the hours they worked.

The legal battle first kicked off in 2013 after employees complained that they were losing time during lunch breaks and at the end of their shifts while Apple had their bags checked. The checks were to help combat theft but were said to have violated Californian law.

From our November report:

Apple was sued by employees in 2013, over claims that workers should be paid for the time they spent waiting to have their bags checked on lunch breaks or at the end of shifts. Apple was alleged to have violated California laws, with the company claiming checks were necessary to ensure products were not stolen from stores by employees. It had also claimed employees who didn't like the process should not bring a bag to work, or that they should leave their own iPhones at home. Previously in retail settings, Apple would issue workers with cards to verify the serial number of any Apple products they owned, this would be signed off by a store manager and then verified at the end of each day, checked against the device itself to ensure they matched.

The best iPhone is one that you didn't steal and Apple was effectively accusing every retail employee of doing exactly that, multiple times per day, all while not paying for the time. Apple employees can learn more about the settlement on Apple's website (opens in new tab).

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.