Apple in the last few weeks has upped the salary of its retail store employees by as much as 25%, a move which will go into effect in just a few weeks.
Apple in the last few weeks has upped the salary of its retail store employees by as much as 25%. Dow Jones reports that the raises will go into effect in just a few weeks.
Employees said they were appreciative of the move, though they considered the raises had been a long time coming. The increased wages, one person said, more accurately reflected Apple’s position as a high-end retailer.
The pay raises, first reported by the Business Insider blog, come two months after Apple’s newly appointed retail chief, John Browett, joined the company. Mr. Browett came to Apple from Dixons Retail PLC, a large chain of electronics stores in the United Kingdom.
Soon after joining the company, Mr. Browett sent a video message to employees saying that he would accelerate employees performance review periods by three months from their originally scheduled period in September.
And in an interesting bit of timing, the New York Times last week ran an article about Apple retail employees and touched upon their pay.
Last year, during his best three-month stretch, Jordan Golson sold about $750,000 worth of computers and gadgets at the Apple Store in Salem, N.H. It was a performance that might have called for a bottle of Champagne — if that were a luxury Mr. Golson could have afforded.
“I was earning $11.25 an hour,” he said. “Part of me was thinking, ‘This is great. I’m an Apple fan, the store is doing really well.’ But when you look at the amount of money the company is making and then you look at your paycheck, it’s kind of tough.”
…
By the standards of retailing, Apple offers above average pay — well above the minimum wage of $7.25 and better than the Gap, though slightly less than Lululemon, the yoga and athletic apparel chain, where sales staff earn about $12 an hour.
The angle or implication posited by the article is that a company as successful as Apple should be paying its retail employees more. This argument, of course, overlooks the fact that Apple’s retail rates are, again, in line with the rest of the retail industry. At a typical Apple store, a floor employee might earn anywhere from $11 to $15/hr while a genius may earn up to $30 an hour.
Apple retail stores are undoubtedly an integral part of the Apple machine, so to speak, so it’s certainly easy to hold Apple to a higher and different standard than other retail employees. So while I certainly applaud the raises Apple is doling out to employees, the broad notion that a successful company should reflexively inundate wealth onto all of its retail staff is a little bit bizarre. Remember, these aren’t careers. These are often part-time jobs college students and young 20-somethings take on to help pay the bills and as long as employee satisfaction is high and retail rates are in line with the industry standard, this seems like a much ado about nothing.
