Apple fired senior engineering program director Ashley Gjøvik, claiming she violated the company’s rules against leaking confidential information.
However, the firing comes after Gjøvik spent months tweeting about allegations of harassment, surveillance and workplace safety. Gjøvik says that she started raising concerns in March 2021 and faced “retaliation and intimidation” from Apple.
“I am disappointed that a company that I have loved since I was a child treated its employees this way,” said Gjøvik. The edge.
Gjøvik began by expressing concern about his office, located in an Apple building on a superfund site. That means it requires special oversight due to historical waste contamination. When Gjøvik raised those safety concerns, he said he faced harassment and intimidation from his manager and other team members.
Gjøvik recently began raising concerns about Apple’s policies on how it can find and monitor employees’ work phones. That included an allegation that Apple previously forced her to hand over all of her text messages, including “totally personal” items such as nude photos. Gjøvik said Apple stored those images in its “permanent evidence locker.”
Apple put Gjøvik on administrative leave in early August while it investigated his concerns. Gjøvik says he applied for the license only as a last resort.
The saga culminated on September 9 when a member of Apple’s employee relations team approached Gjøvik. The team member was investigating a sensitive intellectual property matter, according to The edge, and I wanted to speak to Gjøvik in an hour.
Gjøvik said he wanted to keep all communications in writing and noted that he was forwarding correspondence to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Gjøvik had recently filed a charge with the NLRB, citing harassment by a manager, reduced responsibilities and increased unfavorable work.
However, Apple’s employee relations team responded by saying that because Gjøvik had chosen not to participate in the discussion, they would go ahead with the information they had. In addition, Gjøvik’s access to Apple’s systems was suspended “given the seriousness of these allegations.”
Within hours, Gjøvik received an email informing him that Apple had laid off his job.
The curious can read the the whole saga on the Gjøvik website, where he has extensively documented emails and communications with Apple along with his own tweets about what was happening.
Apple, however, maintains that it takes concerns seriously and says The edge in a sentence:
“We are and always have been deeply committed to creating and maintaining a positive and inclusive workplace. We take all concerns very seriously and investigate thoroughly whenever a concern is raised and, out of respect for the privacy of the individuals involved, we do not discuss specific employee matters. “
Source: Ashley Gjøvik Via: The edge