Apple fires program manager who filed harassment complaint

Not two weeks ago, Ashley Gjøvik filed a complaint with the US labor council accusing her employer, Apple, of unlawful retaliation. She had become too boisterous, she said, about her experiences with sexism and concerns about workplace safety. The company wanted her to stop.

Thursday she was fired.

Gjøvik is one of two employees who lodged a complaint against Apple last month with the United States National Labor Relations Board, alleging harassment and intimidation at the company. (The agency is investigating all charges and pursuing those they can substantiate.) The complaints follow a rare outburst of employee activism at Apple, showing up last month under the hashtag #AppleToo – an overt reference to the Me Too movement of 2017, which toppled powerful men long impervious to allegations of misconduct.

Employees, who have said they seek to speak out against patterns of discrimination and abuse within Apple, said it has been passed under the radar for too long.

In a letter explaining Gjøvik’s dismissal, Apple accuses the (former) senior engineering program manager of leaking “confidential product-related information”, adding that it also “did not cooperate” during the “investigation process”.

Gjøvik, who publicly accused Apple of ignoring a manager’s harassment and subjecting her to hostile working conditions, said by phone that she did not know the details of the “confidential information” that she was. accused of having disclosed.

It was Apple, she said, that ignored her attempts at cooperation.

The company’s emails shared with Gizmodo show that Apple had contacted Gjøvik by email on Thursday afternoon asking him to “connect” with her “as soon as possible today.” “We are looking at a sensitive intellectual property issue that we would like to talk to you about,” read the first email she received.

“Happy to help!” Gjøvik responded a few minutes later, with a caveat: she wanted to stick to the emails, “so we keep everything written down please.”

Almost an hour passed. When Apple responded, it seemed to completely ignore Gjøvik’s request and his enthusiastic agreement to cooperate. “Since you have chosen not to participate in the discussion, we will continue with the information we have, and given the seriousness of these allegations, we are suspending your access to Apple systems,” the response reads.

Gjøvik reiterated: “As mentioned, I am very willing to participate in your inquiry,” adding: “I offered to help by email to make sure we have a document. [record] of our conversations given everything that is currently going on with my investigation and complaints to the government.

Gjøvik added: “I would really like to have the opportunity to remedy any real problem. Please let me know what the problems are so that I can make a good faith attempt. If the company continued to speak only vaguely about the charges against it, she wrote, it would view this as further evidence of retaliation.

Apple’s e-mail responses then ceased. A few hours later, she was unemployed.

The termination letter, shared with Gizmodo, shed no light. He repeated the same ambiguous accusation and said that she “had not cooperated and provided accurate and complete information during Apple’s investigative process.”

A survey of Apple has no reply. In a statement to the edge, Nevertheless, the company said it wouldn’t be address all “Employee specific questions”.

Speaking on the phone, Gjøvik’s voice cracks several times. “Apple has been my favorite company since I was little. It was [my] dreams of working for them, ”she said. “Even though I had a terrible experience, I feel like I did a really good job. It was like betrayal that they treated me that way.

Gjøvik said she was still not surprised. Since she started raising concerns about workplace safety in March, her office has been built on a superfonds site which requires special permits due to previous contamination with hazardous waste – she had prepared for the flashback.

“I wasn’t going to shut up or slip away. I was going to defend myself and my colleagues, ”said Gjøvik. “I was going to outline the systemic issues that I identified. I was going to organize myself with the employees. I was going to demand internal and public accountability from the biggest company in the world.

Her only wish, she said, was to “make a dent in the universe” of Apple’s employment and work practices.