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On November 17, 2021, Scarlett announced that she was voluntarily leaving Apple upon reaching a ] with the company and the NLRB,<ref>{{Cite web|last=Clark|first=Mitchell|date=November 17, 2021|title=Apple pay equity and harassment organizer will leave the company after reaching a settlement|url=https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/17/22788245/cher-scarlett-apple-nlrb-settlement-leaves-company-appletoo-pay-equity|url-status=live|access-date=November 17, 2021|website=]|language=en}}</ref> which included a severance of one year's pay. Scarlett agreed to request to withdraw the NLRB complaint under the condition that Apple make a "public, visible affirmation" that employees could freely discuss workplace conditions and salary. In December, Scarlett said that Apple had not made changes to the language of her settlement relating to continued workplace organizing, as had been requested by the NLRB, and that this had led the NLRB to reject her request to withdraw the complaint.<ref name=":14" /> She also said that Apple had not upheld their agreement with regards to the public statement, which she said had been stipulated to be in a "prominent and visible location".<ref>{{Cite news|last=Clark|first=Mitchell|date=9 December 2021|title=Former Apple employee says she won’t withdraw her labor board complaint|work=]|url=https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/9/22826620/apple-labor-cher-scarlett-settlement-nlrb-complaint|access-date=11 December 2021}}</ref> The company did post the affirmation,<ref>{{Cite news|last=Schiffer|first=Zoe|date=19 November 2021|title=Apple posts internal memo affirming employees' right to discuss pay|work=]|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/apple/apple-posts-internal-memo-affirming-employees-right-discuss-pay-rcna5777|access-date=11 December 2021}}</ref> but removed it before employees returned to the office after the week they had been given off for ].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Warwick|first=Stephen|date=2021-09-18|title=Tim Cook addresses pay, diversity, privacy, and more at internal meeting|url=https://www.imore.com/tim-cook-addresses-pay-diversity-privacy-and-more-internal-apple-meeting|url-status=live|access-date=2021-12-11|website=iMore}}</ref> As a result she said she would not be making another request to withdraw the complaint.<ref name=":14">{{Cite web|last=Au-Yeung|first=Angel|date=December 9, 2021|title=Ex-Apple Engineer Cher Scarlett No Longer Withdrawing U.S. Labor Agency Complaint Against Apple|url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2021/12/09/ex-apple-engineer-cher-scarlett-reinstates-us-labor-agency-complaint-against-apple/|url-status=live|access-date=December 11, 2021|website=]|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Choi|first=Joseph|date=December 9, 2021|title=Former Apple employee isn't withdrawing labor complaint|url=https://thehill.com/policy/technology/585217-former-apple-employee-says-she-wont-withdraw-labor-complaint|url-status=live|access-date=December 11, 2021|website=]|language=en}}</ref> On November 17, 2021, Scarlett announced that she was voluntarily leaving Apple upon reaching a ] with the company and the NLRB,<ref>{{Cite web|last=Clark|first=Mitchell|date=November 17, 2021|title=Apple pay equity and harassment organizer will leave the company after reaching a settlement|url=https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/17/22788245/cher-scarlett-apple-nlrb-settlement-leaves-company-appletoo-pay-equity|url-status=live|access-date=November 17, 2021|website=]|language=en}}</ref> which included a severance of one year's pay. Scarlett agreed to request to withdraw the NLRB complaint under the condition that Apple make a "public, visible affirmation" that employees could freely discuss workplace conditions and salary. In December, Scarlett said that Apple had not made changes to the language of her settlement relating to continued workplace organizing, as had been requested by the NLRB, and that this had led the NLRB to reject her request to withdraw the complaint.<ref name=":14" /> She also said that Apple had not upheld their agreement with regards to the public statement, which she said had been stipulated to be in a "prominent and visible location".<ref>{{Cite news|last=Clark|first=Mitchell|date=9 December 2021|title=Former Apple employee says she won’t withdraw her labor board complaint|work=]|url=https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/9/22826620/apple-labor-cher-scarlett-settlement-nlrb-complaint|access-date=11 December 2021}}</ref> The company did post the affirmation,<ref>{{Cite news|last=Schiffer|first=Zoe|date=19 November 2021|title=Apple posts internal memo affirming employees' right to discuss pay|work=]|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/apple/apple-posts-internal-memo-affirming-employees-right-discuss-pay-rcna5777|access-date=11 December 2021}}</ref> but removed it before employees returned to the office after the week they had been given off for ].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Warwick|first=Stephen|date=2021-09-18|title=Tim Cook addresses pay, diversity, privacy, and more at internal meeting|url=https://www.imore.com/tim-cook-addresses-pay-diversity-privacy-and-more-internal-apple-meeting|url-status=live|access-date=2021-12-11|website=iMore}}</ref> As a result she said she would not be making another request to withdraw the complaint.<ref name=":14">{{Cite web|last=Au-Yeung|first=Angel|date=December 9, 2021|title=Ex-Apple Engineer Cher Scarlett No Longer Withdrawing U.S. Labor Agency Complaint Against Apple|url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2021/12/09/ex-apple-engineer-cher-scarlett-reinstates-us-labor-agency-complaint-against-apple/|url-status=live|access-date=December 11, 2021|website=]|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Choi|first=Joseph|date=December 9, 2021|title=Former Apple employee isn't withdrawing labor complaint|url=https://thehill.com/policy/technology/585217-former-apple-employee-says-she-wont-withdraw-labor-complaint|url-status=live|access-date=December 11, 2021|website=]|language=en}}</ref>


Scarlett received less than a half a year's severance,<ref name=":10" /><ref name=":14" /> and Apple sent her attorney a letter stating they would not be paying her attorneys, or making future payments to Scarlett, because she "repeatedly" breached her non-disclosure agreement. The letter also stated Apple was "preserving its right to seek liquidated damage for each separate breach," to which Scarlett highlighted her debt saying, "I don’t have anything for them to take."<ref>{{Cite web|last=Sumagaysay|first=Levi|title=SEC rejects Apple's argument that it doesn't try to silence workers after former employee disputed it|url=https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sec-rejects-apples-argument-that-it-doesnt-try-to-silence-workers-after-former-employee-disputed-it-11640218188|access-date=2021-12-24|website=MarketWatch|language=EN-US}}</ref>
Scarlett said that she received less than a half a year's severance to date, and that she did not expect to receive the remainder for discussing the terms of the settlement,<ref name=":14" /> and for her previous whistleblower tip to the SEC.<ref name=":10" />


=== Legislation === === Legislation ===

Revision as of 19:46, 24 December 2021

American software engineer and labor activist

Cher Scarlett
Headshot of Cher Scarlett
Born1984 or 1985 (age 39–40)
OccupationSoftware engineer
Known forWorkers' rights activism
Notable work#AppleToo movement

Cher Scarlett (born 1984 or 1985) is an American software engineer. She is known for her workers' rights activism and organizing at Apple and other technology companies. She was a leader of the #AppleToo movement, which gathers and shares stories of mistreatment from current and former Apple employees.

Career and activism

In 2007, Scarlett saw an advertisement for a web development position at a real estate firm. She got the job, and worked there for a portion of the year before becoming a freelance developer. In 2011, Scarlett was recruited as a web developer at USA Today.

In 2015, Scarlett began a job as a software engineer at the Activision Blizzard video games studio, where she worked on their Battle.net platform. She says that she and her manager developed the games publisher's first interactive esports brackets and esports data API. She began to be more aware of discrimination and prejudice in the technology industry, and pressed the company's human resources department on gender-based pay discrimination she had observed. She left the company after working there for a little over a year, and later provided testimony to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, who filed a 2021 lawsuit alleging systemic discrimination, sexual harassment, and retaliation. During that lawsuit, Scarlett helped to direct others who had allegedly been victims of sexual assault while at the company to a group of women who were joining to sue the company, and to state and federal agencies. She also spoke publicly about her own experiences with the company, highlighting the inadequate care of female employees by referencing a number of events involving underpayment, sexual harassment, and abuse, including what she said was improper handling of an incident from 2018 when she outed one of Overwatch League's unpaid moderators for previously hoarding and distributing revenge porn.

After leaving Activision Blizzard, Scarlett briefly worked at World Wide Technology. In 2017, she became a lead software engineer at Starbucks, where she later joined others to organize an ultimately successful campaign to address gender-based pay disparities. After leaving in 2019, she wrote publicly about what she alleged to be a practice at Starbucks of paying lower wages to workers in areas that were predominantly Black or had high proportions of underrepresented groups.

In 2019, Scarlett began working for Webflow. She continued to write, primarily advocating for fair pay for members of underrepresented groups. Also in 2019, she became a maintainer for a website that advocates for healthy work–life balance in tech, 1x.engineer, a play on the heavily-stereotyped idea of a "10x engineer".

Apple

See also: Apple Inc. and Apple worker organizations

In early 2020, an Apple engineer referred Scarlett for a job on Apple's software security team, and she began working there in April 2020 as a principal software engineer.

A year later, Apple hired Antonio García Martínez, who had previously written in a book that women in the Bay Area were "soft and weak, cosseted and naive". After being approached by other employees who believed the hire was not aligned with Apple's stated principles on diversity and inclusion, Scarlett, along with other employees, wrote a letter to management which spoke out against the hire and made a list of demands towards the company. The letter subsequently leaked, and it earned media attention. Garcia Martinez was fired shortly after the controversy.

In mid-2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple began requiring most employees to return to working in the office several days a week. Scarlett helped to lead employees in organizing to be allowed to continue working remotely.

Also in 2021, Scarlett began to believe, based on anecdotal evidence and data from a website called levels.fyi, that there was a wage gap at Apple. When employees tried to organize internal surveys to more widely gather pay data, Apple quashed them several times. Scarlett launched her own survey, outside of Apple, which earned over 2,000 submissions. On September 1, 2021, she filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), alleging that Apple had violated the law in stopping employees from discussing their salaries.

Scarlett, along with Janneke Parrish, was a leader of the #AppleToo movement. The group created a website and Medium page, on which they posted anonymous reports of mistreatment including verbal and sexual abuse, retaliation, discrimination, poor working conditions, and unequal pay experienced by Apple employees and contractors. Scarlett has said that Apple's culture of loyalty and secrecy has discouraged employees from speaking out. In September 2021, Scarlett said the group had received over 600 stories from employees. In October, Parrish was fired by Apple. Scarlett went on medical leave, saying that harassment from colleagues at Apple began to affect her mental health, then briefly returned to work in November.

On October 25, Scarlett filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over Apple's statements to the SEC claiming that the company does not use non-disclosure agreements "in the context of harassment, discrimination, and other unlawful acts". Scarlett provided the SEC with a non-disclosure and non-disparagement clause that Apple had included as a part of a separation agreement, and which she had refused to sign. In the SEC complaint, Scarlett said that Apple had tried to stipulate that she describe her choice to "leav the company being a personal decision, rather than fleeing a hostile work environment after attempting to exercise my rights and help others organize".

On November 17, 2021, Scarlett announced that she was voluntarily leaving Apple upon reaching a non-board settlement with the company and the NLRB, which included a severance of one year's pay. Scarlett agreed to request to withdraw the NLRB complaint under the condition that Apple make a "public, visible affirmation" that employees could freely discuss workplace conditions and salary. In December, Scarlett said that Apple had not made changes to the language of her settlement relating to continued workplace organizing, as had been requested by the NLRB, and that this had led the NLRB to reject her request to withdraw the complaint. She also said that Apple had not upheld their agreement with regards to the public statement, which she said had been stipulated to be in a "prominent and visible location". The company did post the affirmation, but removed it before employees returned to the office after the week they had been given off for Thanksgiving. As a result she said she would not be making another request to withdraw the complaint.

Scarlett received less than a half a year's severance, and Apple sent her attorney a letter stating they would not be paying her attorneys, or making future payments to Scarlett, because she "repeatedly" breached her non-disclosure agreement. The letter also stated Apple was "preserving its right to seek liquidated damage for each separate breach," to which Scarlett highlighted her debt saying, "I don’t have anything for them to take."

Legislation

In October 2021, Scarlett contacted Ifeoma Ozoma for advice on lobbying for legislation in her home state of Washington similar to the Silenced No More Act, a bill Ozoma worked on with California lawmakers that prevents employers from silencing whistleblowers. In October 2021, Scarlett contacted Senator Karen Keiser. Keiser's office confirmed in November 2021 that she and House Representative Liz Berry would be co-sponsoring whistleblower protection legislation in the next session starting in January 2022.

Personal life

Scarlett was born in Walla Walla, Washington and grew up in Kirkland. She attended Juanita High School in the early 2000s, and says she earned a nearly perfect score on the SAT. Scarlett was interested in science and video gaming, and says she wanted to be a scientist and go to space after being a junior astronaut and studying biotechnology while in school. Scarlett taught herself to code during middle school, creating a website for her guild in EverQuest. She continued experimenting with web development on the blogging platform LiveJournal.

Scarlett experienced sexual abuse at a young age, and when she was in high school began battling drug addiction, eventually dropping out and attempting to overdose. Prior to starting her career, Scarlett worked as a stripper, but says getting pregnant prompted her to change her life. She has one child. Scarlett has bipolar I disorder.

Scarlett is active on Twitter, where she is known for her advocacy for marginalized groups.

See also

References

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