With a record number of American employees leaving their jobs last March (4.53 million precisely), no company is immune to the phenomenon of “the great resignation” which has rocked the United States since the pandemic. It is in this context that Apple has just announced on Wednesday that the minimum wage for its American employees will be increased to 22 dollars per hour from the beginning of July. A figure which represents an increase of 45% compared to the minimum remuneration of 2018, according to a press release from the manufacturer of the iPhone. This leap forward is clearly aimed at better retaining employees, more than boosting their productivity, the apple firm having declared that it does not plan to increase production of its phones for 2022. The Cupertino group did not not give more details on the terms of application of these increases.
Note that the American coffee giant Starbucks has also recently announced substantial salary increases, but reserved for its non-unionized employees. But Apple is facing, like other major groups, a wave of union activity. In April, employees at the Atlanta store filed a petition to try to become the company’s first U.S. store to unionize. Just recently, the group’s director of human resources, Deirdre O’Brien, shared a video with more than 60,000 American employees of the group to convince them that unionism is not a good idea.
