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Ashley Gjøvik (born 1985 or 1986) is a program manager and activist who is known for her whistleblowing and labor complaints against Apple Inc. After she raised her concerns about Apple in 2021, including those pertaining to possible environmental contamination at an Apple office that is built upon a Superfund site, Gjøvik alleged she experienced retaliation that ultimately ended in her firing. Apple fired her in September 2021 for allegedly leaking confidential intellectual property, which Gjøvik denies.

Career

Gjøvik began working at Apple in 2015. In 2021, Gjøvik was a senior engineering program manager working out of their Sunnyvale, California office. While working at Apple, Gjøvik began a law degree, and as of 2021 she was in her fourth year of law school at Santa Clara University. She also works with a law group that helps asylum seekers, and has published writing about public health, privacy, and human rights.

Apple complaints

After raising concerns internally with Apple, Gjøvik began speaking openly on Twitter and to press. Her allegations against Apple include mishandling of environmental concerns, retaliation, harassment, and violations of employee privacy.

Environmental concerns

In March 2021, Gjøvik raised concerns with Apple that employees working in the Sunnyvale office were possibly being exposed to hazardous chemicals. The building is located on a Superfund site, where a microwave components manufacturer had leaked acids, heavy metals, and industrial solvents including trichloroethylene (TCE) into the soil in the 1970s. Several projects to mitigate the chemical waste were undertaken after the contamination, and in 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that the issues had been sufficiently addressed. However, air samples taken the following year at nearby locations found "unacceptable" amounts of TCE vapor. A 2019 EPA study found the vapor issue had been managed, but would need a long-term remedy. Gjøvik said she had fainted at work and did not know why, and that she had concerns that Apple had not properly tested the site for contaminants. She also stated that Apple hadn't sufficiently informed employees of the possible health issue. Gjøvik ultimately filed a complaint with the EPA. She alleges that after raising her concerns, Apple instructed her not to tell other employees about the potential health hazards, and that she was harassed and humiliated.

Employee privacy concerns

Gjøvik has also spoken publicly about privacy concerns as an Apple employee. In 2018, Gjøvik's engineering team was involved in a lawsuit, and because she had worked on a project that was relevant to the lawsuit, lawyers requested files from her phone and computer and told her not to delete any files. Gjøvik said her team had recommended against keeping separate phones for her personal and professional use, and so she had personal documents on the phone, including nude photographs. When she asked if she could delete the photographs, lawyers said no.

"Glimmer", formerly known as "Gobbler", was an internal tool that was created to test Apple's Face ID software before its 2017 launch. The app took photos and brief videos when it sensed a face. Gjøvik described the app as "spyware", saying, "It was taking photos of me in my home, in my bathroom, in bed, anywhere I had my phone... And it stored these photos somewhere and uploads them sometimes to some place— didn’t tell us much". Gjøvik had signed an informed consent form before the app was installed, though Gjøvik and other Apple staff have alleged that agreeing to help beta test software like Glimmer was expected of them.

Gjøvik spoke to press about her concerns pertaining to data privacy with an internal bug tracking tool called "Radar", which stores reports indefinitely and has broad defaults for employee access. Gjøvik filed a bug report in 2019, about Apple's photo search software returning "a selfie I took of myself in bed after laparoscopic surgery to treat my endometriosis" when she entered the search term "infant", and included the photographs with the report. The report couldn't be subsequently removed, and the default sharing settings allowed Apple's entire software engineering team to view the images.

Sexual harassment and discrimination

Gjøvik has alleged that Apple pressured her into revealing details of sexual harassment she had experienced, after she mentioned the incident in an unrelated meeting with a member of Apple's human resources department. She said that Apple took no action related to her report except to reveal her to the employee she had accused.

Gjøvik complained to Apple about sex discrimination from a male manager, and Apple closed the investigation finding no wrongdoing. Following the closure of the investigation, she wrote on Twitter about the experience on August 2, 2021, "Wanted to share: #Apple employee relations confirmed this #tonepolicing is totally ok feedback for me to get from my #bigtech #male leaders & not #sexist. As this investigation rolls on, I've decided to start Tweeting the stuff they say is 'ok.' I mean, they did say it was ok?" In the tweet, she attached a screenshot of feedback from a manager who wrote that he "didn't hear you going up an octave at the end of your statements" and that she "came across as much more authoritative".

Complaints, administrative leave, and firing

In addition to her complaint to the Environmental Protection Agency, Gjøvik has filed various complaints about Apple with the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the United States Department of Justice. She alleges that after making her complaints, she was retaliated against repeatedly, and was reassigned. On August 4, 2021, Apple placed her on indefinite paid administrative leave, which she said she requested as a "last resort". On August 26, 2021, Gjøvik filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), alleging retaliation as well as harassment by a manager and forced administrative leave.

On September 9, 2021, a member of Apple's human resources team contacted her, asking to speak about "a sensitive Intellectual Property matter". Gjøvik replied that she would speak to them, but that the conversation would need to be captured in writing, and she would forward it to the NLRB. Apple replied, "Since you have chosen not to participate in the discussion... we will move forward with the information that we have" and suspended her employee access. She was formally fired in a third email later that day for "fail to cooperate" with the investigation.

Gjøvik had previously posted on Twitter a photograph of herself that had been taken by Glimmer, and screenshots of an email that asked her to volunteer to have her ears 3D-scanned to aid in AirPods development. On September 15, 2021, she was asked to remove the two tweets in an email from the O'Melveny & Myers law firm, on behalf of Apple. The email claimed the tweets were violating a confidentiality agreement she'd signed when she first joined the company. Gjøvik complied with the request to remove the tweets, though in communications via a lawyer to Apple she argued that the material she had shared was not labeled confidential and didn't contain anything secret or proprietary, and that the photograph of her couldn't reasonably be argued to be copyrighted by Apple.

References

1. ^ Cameron, Dell (October 14, 2021). "Apple Wanted Her Fired. It Settled On an Absurd Excuse". Gizmodo. Retrieved December 30, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
2. ^ Schiffer, Zoe (August 4, 2021). "Apple places female engineering program manager on administrative leave after tweeting about sexism in the office". The Verge. Retrieved December 31, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
3. ^ McGee, Patrick; Temple-West, Patrick (December 13, 2021). "Apple faces probe over whether it retaliated against whistleblower". Financial Times. Retrieved December 30, 2021.
4. ^ Schiffer, Zoe (September 9, 2021). "Apple fires senior engineering program manager Ashley Gjøvik for allegedly leaking information". The Verge. Retrieved December 30, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
5. ^ Schiffer, Zoe (August 30, 2021). "Apple cares about privacy, unless you work at Apple". The Verge. Retrieved December 30, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
6. Eidelson, Josh (October 12, 2021). "Apple CEO's Anti-Leak Edict Broke Law, Ex-Employee Alleges". Bloomberg. Retrieved December 30, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
7. Nicas, Jack; Browning, Kellen (September 17, 2021). "Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 30, 2021.
8. Savov, Vlad; Eidelson, Josh (September 10, 2021). "Apple Fires Manager Who Complained; She Gains Right to Sue". Bloomberg. Retrieved December 30, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)