SEPTEMBER 16 – iPhone 14 release day.
IN SUPPORT OF THE PICKET CALLED BY CNT APPLE PDG IN THE APPLE PASSEIG DE GRACIA STORE.
⬇️ Entire Manifiest ⬇️
➡️En español⬅️
In Apple all that glitters is not gold, its successful economic results hide a precarious labor reality, with some lights and many shadows.
An immense majority of the workforce are part timers, that barely make ends meet, and only get 7 free weekends per year.
A job with totally irregular hours in which to get 2 succesive free days is almost a miracle and must have availability from Monday to Sunday even if you are just a part timer.
This way Apple takes over our time and our life. The anxiety and the depression are causing havoc in our teams.
The influx of customers is constantly increasing and workers are never enough to meet an ever-increasing demand. We feel a terrible weight on our shoulders and our stress levels skyrocket. We spend the 100% of our working time running, and with more and more demands from the company, the customers and their ratings. This is taking a toll on our physical and mental health.
Every day, the number of people who need to take anxiolytics to be able to support this workload grows. A job in which we also are required to wear a perpetual smile and where publicly questioning the company’s or their leaders’ decisions is penalized.
Sometimes, we can doubt and think that maybe these or those problems just happen to us, to a single store or territory… But no, our problems are really similar that those who suffer our colleagues in all stores in the country and in the world.
Thanks to the (necessary) unionization of more and more stores around the world (USA, United Kingdom, Australia, France or Japan, the AppleToo and AppleTogether movements…) the reality of Apple workers is becoming public. Little by Little, our colleagues are becoming aware that only united and organizing their rebellion will they be able to transform their reality.
Some months ago, our colleagues from PDG signed a public letter asking for changes and improvements. But it was practically ignored although the situations that were expressed are suffered by all workers.
CCOO and Fetico, company-related unions, did everything they could to hide and to boycott it. They did the same in 2 strikes that were called by CGT at Apple Passeig de Gracia in June and July 2022 due to the unnecessary increase in openings on Sundays and holidays.
The reality is, that in Apple Retail Spain the union elites that hold the majorities of representation aren’t (and aren’t expected to be) with the workers. So, it is the duty of all workers to unmask those union bureaucracies that have spent years in the department stores commisions negotiating and signing agreements to the detriment of the working conditions of thousands of workers.
Apple is a fertile field for the pseudo-syndicalism of Groupalia discounts. If you join or ask for help from a real union… you are persecuted and subjected to retailation.
That’s the reason why workers from many stores, wanting to change our reality and this rotten union system inside Apple, took a brave step and created the union section of the CGT. And today, together with our colleagues from the CNT, we want to raise our voices and defend our right to a better work.
Syndicalism, the progress in rights and benefits must be the work of all workers, and not of any elite. When the workers’ struggle becomes professional, happens what has happened in recent years: workers stop going to the union and only go when a personal problem occurs.
If workers move away from the culture of labor organization, they stop doing “that weird thing about syndicalism”, they see unionists as politicians or lawyers, and believe that syndicalism is the work of those union professionals, that “they get paid for it”, and that their duty is to solve personal problems from the workers.
That’s the way they forget that the workers’ problems must be solved by the workers themselves, unionists included.
And this current situation fascinates the company! Because they can do and undo as they please.
A current situation that can be summarized in:
- Extreme levels of stress and demand. Our physical and mental health is at risk every day we cross the store’s gates.
- Totally irregular and dehumanized hours imposed by algorythms that subjugate our time and our life.
- Total absence of proper rest time, with only 7 free weekends per year that the company concentrates in specific periods of the year.
- Working in Sundays and holidays without any additional remuneration.
- Salaries that do not grow at the same rate the CPI does. Cost of life has increased, inflation is out of control, the prices of the iPhone, its cases, screen protectors, and repairs also increase, some of them by a 20%, and to the luckiests of the workers the company has increased their salary by an 8%! And by a 0% to many others!
- Outdated benefits. We all know that it would be free for them to increase the Ticket Restaurant to 11,5€ per day, but, for what? “With 10€ they get by!”
- The recruitment selection process systems continue to be unfair and arbitrary. A system that doesn’t reward those who are more valid for the position.
- Conciliations for minor care, dependent care or studies are difficult. And it is almost imposible to maintain a full family or social life.
Apple should do better! We are living a crucial time and is coming the time to be united and say loud and clear to Apple that its next reléase must be one of work improvements. With your help we will make it posible.
