How Slack has enabled Apple employees go ‘public’ with their complaints – Times of India

In the last couple of years, Google has been in news because of its employees complaining quite a bit over its policies. In the pre-pandemic world, there were protests against the company by the employees as well. Google through tough measures seems to have got a handle on the situation. Now, it seems like it is the turn of Apple employees to raise their concerns and they have found an ally in Slack — a popular online communication platform for organisations.
According to a report by The Information, Slack has made it easier to for Apple employees to talk to each other and also given them a platform to voice their concerns.

How does Slack help Apple employees?

“Before Slack, it was difficult for employees to talk to somebody who works in retail unless you went to the store,” Cher Scarlett, a software engineer on Apple’s global security team told The Information. Scarlett further said it has given “people a platform that allows them to connect with people they wouldn’t ordinarily connect with.”
The report further adds that Apple’s Slack has more than 3,000 channels and about 10,000 people in some of those channels. What Slack has done is given Apple employees — across teams and countries — to learn about what issues they face and whether they can be raised or not. Apple is known as a secretive company and employees do follow that code as well. Slack, and to a certain extent Twitter, has changed that. “Slack and social media have been absolutely the biggest catalyst in giving workers the ability to organise,” Scarlett added.

What are Apple employees complaining about?

One of the most recent complaints was about going back to offices. Some Apple employees weren’t happy about the company’s plans of calling employees back to office some days of the week. Apple had detailed out its hybrid model of bringing back employees, which didn’t go down too well with the employees. Some of them took to Slack and made their complaints heard. It’s a different matter that the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the US has pushed the company’s plans back to January 2022.
Some employees have also created AppleToo website with the idea of bringing to light stories — if they have experienced — any form of harassment or discrimination.
When Apple recently announced its plans regarding a new system that could detect photos of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), it faced criticism. Apple employees, according to a report by Reuters, “flooded an Apple internal Slack channel with more than 800 messages on the plan.” The report further added that a lot of them expressed concerns over how the technology in the wrong hands could be exploited.