Apple has agreed to settle charges of labor rights violations filed with America’s employment watchdog by whistleblower Ashley Gjøvik.
“Today marks a monumental moment in my legal battles for accountability and worker rights: The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has finalized a settlement with Apple, requiring the company to rescind its unlawful workplace policies on a nationwide basis,” Gjøvik said in a statement on her website this week.
Gjøvik, a former senior engineering program manager at Apple who presently oversees an air pollution research program at Northeastern University and advocates for corporate responsibility, filed a complaint with the NLRB in 2021.
Under the settlement [PDF] stemming from that complaint, Apple acknowledged its Confidentiality and Intellectual Property Agreement with its workers “does not include wages, hours, and working conditions,” and does not bar employees from speaking to the press about these topics. It also says Apple acknowledges employees can share personal contact information with coworkers and can engage in union activity and other protected concerted action.
The iPhone giant was pushed to publicly acknowledge the above after Gjøvik claimed she was fired for engaging in activity that’s supposed to be protected under labor law, such as raising concerns about working conditions.
For example, per her NLRB complaint, she circulated a petition among employees about return-to-office concerns, talked to newspaper outlets about employees’ workplace complaints and concerns, and posted about workplace complaints and concerns on social media channels and on Apple’s Slack workspace.
Doing so made her fall foul of the terms of the staff confidentiality agreement, Cupertino claimed, leading to her dismissal, terms the Mac titan has now disavowed.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
Apple thought fear could hold its system together
Gjøvik says this is the first public labor settlement of its kind Apple has ever executed.
“Apple thought fear could hold its system together,” Gjøvik told The Register. “But unlawful policies don’t become lawful just because people are afraid to challenge them. This federal enforcement action revealed how deeply Apple’s power depended on silencing its workers — and how fragile that power truly is.”
Though Gjøvik has agreed to the settlement, she said in a related memorandum [PDF] she still has some reservations about the limitations of the agreement.
“For one, the settlement’s policy revisions, while significant – do not address several categories of retaliation and coercive behavior that remain unremedied or unexamined, including: Surveillance, email interception, and device monitoring in relation to protected activities; threats or internal referrals aimed at chilling protected disclosures; and retaliation based on public statements regarding working conditions,” she said.
Wendy Musell, counsel to employment law firm Levy Vinick Burrell Hyams LLP, told The Register that while Apple’s concessions don’t change much for workers in California, they could make protected labor activity easier for Apple employees in other US states.
“The rollbacks of provisions that suppressed employees’ rights to discuss wages, hours, working conditions, to speak to the press, and for employees to come to share their own contact information and engage in union activity – from my perspective under California law, all of those things are already rights that exist for California workers,” she said.
“Some of these rights already exist as well under the NLRA [National Labor Relations Act]. I think what’s really important is the market forces.
“So having an employer like Apple enter into a settlement agreement where they have to acknowledge that these are rights that workers currently have under federal law, and that they cannot engage in conduct to prohibit employees from discussing their terms and conditions of employment, including their wages, and engaging in concerted activity, is extremely important as a market force issue and ensuring changes across the sector, especially in states like Texas.”
And the existence of this agreement, Musell said, could become an important piece of evidence in future adversarial proceedings if similar allegations are brought against Apple.
The NLRB claim is one of several complaints filed by Gjøvik alleging that Apple violated labor and environmental laws.
Gjøvik has submitted complaints with other US agencies, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal Department of Labor, the California Department of Labor, and the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) – renamed the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) in 2022.
The EEOC and DFEH complaints have since been merged into a federal lawsuit [PDF].
Gjøvik, who earned a law degree in June 2022, filed her September 2023 claim against Apple pro se – she’s representing herself in court against one of the largest companies in the world.
The federal case, since amended several times, has been appealed to the Ninth Circuit following a judge’s motion in February 2025 that dismissed some claims. Apple presently is trying to have the appeal tossed and Gjøvik is pushing back.
Gjøvik’s grievances date back to February 2020, when she moved into Santa Clara Square Apartments, adjacent to a stealth Apple semiconductor fabrication facility at 3250 Scott Boulevard, in Santa Clara, California.
The EPA-documented site has experienced numerous toxic chemical leaks over the years, as detailed in documents uploaded to Gjøvik’s website and entered into the court record. Such events have been recorded at an Apple datacenter in North Carolina. Gjøvik says she experienced severe health effects from chemical exposure due to her proximity to the Scotts Boulevard site.
Upon moving into her apartment near the Apple chip fab, Gjøvik says she “quickly became severely ill with severe fainting spells, dizziness, chest pain, palpitations, stomach aches, exhaustion, fatigue, and strange sensations in her muscles and skin.”
Her complaint details many other health problems: “Bradycardia, volatile blood pressure with hypertension and hypotension, and a high frequency of premature ventricular contractions,” as well as skin rashes, burns, hives, and hair loss.
Gjøvik raised concerns about environmental safety at the Santa Clara facility and elsewhere with Apple.
The result, she maintains, was retaliation, suspension, and ultimately termination – for which the NLRB has sued Apple in a separate proceeding.
The NLRB hearing on Gjøvik’s dismissal from Apple is scheduled for August. ®
