Employees Accuse Apple of Racism Amidst Return to Office

A group of Apple employees wrote a letter to CEO Tim Cook accusing the company’s return to office of being racist, per The Daily Mail. They petitioned for a hybrid work schedule allowing them in office three days a week and said the push for in-person work is really to make the company “younger, whiter and male-dominated.”

According to Apple’s latest Inclusion and Diversity report, the company’s employees are 65 percent male and 35 percent female. The majority are white (by 43 percent) and 9 percent of the employees are Black. The employees, who call themselves Apple Together, wrote that the move to in-person work furthered the disparities in the company and will “lead to privileges deciding who can work for Apple” instead of who’d be the best fit.

More from Apple Together’s open letter:

Apple will likely always find people willing to work here, but our current policies requiring everyone to relocate to the office their team happens to be based in, and being in the office at least 3 fixed days of the week, will change the makeup of our workforce. It will make Apple younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied, in short, it will lead to privileges deciding who can work for Apple, not who’d be the best fit.

Privileges like “being born in the the right place so you don’t have to relocate”, or “being young enough to start a new life in a new city/country” or “having a stay-at-home spouse who will move with you”. And privileges like being born into a gender that society doesn’t expect the majority of care-work from, so it’s easy to disappear into an office all day, without doing your fair share of unpaid work in society. Or being rich enough to pay others to do your care-work for you.

This is only the latest concern of worker discrimination. The company also has pending complaints filed by former employees Cher Scarlett and Janneke Parrish who previously accused the company of racism and discrimination.

Apple Together urged the company to consider creating a work environment where everyone is able to work which includes location-flexibility. The point is to give people a choice.

“Here we are, the smart people that you hired, and we are telling you what to do: Please get out of our way, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, let us decide how we work best, and let us do the best work of our lives,” read the open letter.