Dec 23 – Apple Inc. workers in Australia went on strike on Friday afternoon to demand better working conditions and wages, a workers’ union said, a move that could hurt the tech giant’s sales during the peak Christmas period purchases. time.
Workers represented by the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union of Australia (RAFFWU) announced earlier this month that they would walk out of Apple retail stores across the country at 15:00 local time (04:00 GMT) on December 23, with plans to stay away throughout Christmas day.
The strike comes as the tech giant faces disruptions at its flagship iPhone manufacturing plant in China due to a rare worker protest against the country’s ultra-strict COVID rules and poor handling of the factory situation.
In early June, Apple employees in Maryland, United States, became the first retail employees of the tech giant to unionize in the country as employees continued to criticize the company’s working conditions.
The RAFFWU, which is spearheading the strike, says the eight-year-old agreement bans workers from “weekends, consecutive days off, fixed schedules, fixed working days, 12-hour breaks between shifts, overtime rates” among other things.
“The 2014 agreement is one such agreement that pushed workers below the legal minimum,” the union claimed, demanding that the iPhone maker immediately return to the table and negotiate a fair deal.
Apple declined Reuters’ request for comment.