This is an old revision of this page, as edited by SquareInARoundHole (talk | contribs) at 21:54, 31 December 2021 (Expanded career to include further education to highlight academic accomplishments, and expanded complaints. Added Scarlett to SEC section as it is relevant here.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 21:54, 31 December 2021 by SquareInARoundHole (talk | contribs) (Expanded career to include further education to highlight academic accomplishments, and expanded complaints. Added Scarlett to SEC section as it is relevant here.)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) Program manager and whistleblower| Ashley Gjøvik | |
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| Born | 1985 or 1986 (age 38–39) |
| Alma mater | Portland State University |
| Occupation | Program manager |
| Known for | Whistleblowing at Apple Inc. |
Ashley Gjøvik (born 1985 or 1986) is an American 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.
Education & Career
Gjøvik attended Bennington College from 2004-2005, transferring to Portland State University in 2007, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in 2012 in Liberal Studies.
Gjøvik began working at Apple in 2015, and remained there until September 2021, during which time she studied transitional justice at University of Oxford and began a law degree at Santa Clara University. As of 2021, she was in her fourth year as a Juris Doctor candidate, while she worked as a senior engineering program manager working out of Apple's Sunnyvale, California office.
She also worked 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, violations of employee privacy, harassment, and retaliation.
Environmental concerns
On March 17, 2021, Gjøvik received an email from Apple’s environmental health and safety team notifying staff of forthcoming vapor intrusion testing. She asked the team what type of testing had been done in the previous six years, and says was told not to discuss her concerns with other employees, a request she alleged was a violation of her rights under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. She went on to raise her concerns amongst employees in the Sunnyvale office that they were possibly being exposed to hazardous chemicals, urging them to test the air, and that she was subsequently harassed and humiliated. 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, and alleged that Apple "poisoned" her "physically, mentally, spiritually".
Employee privacy concerns
Gjøvik has 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". Other employees said the upload process was user-initiated, and that they were instructed "not to upload anything sensitive, confidential, or private," although other staffers reported a company policy that bars employees from wiping their company-owned devices when they leave the company, and violation of the policy leaves them open to legal action. Gjøvik had signed an informed consent form before the app was installed, though Gjøvik and other Apple staff have alleged that agreeing to help 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". The report couldn't be subsequently removed, and the default sharing settings allowed Apple's entire software engineering team to view the details of the report.
Sexual harassment and discrimination
See also: AppleTooGjøvik 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 also complained to Apple about sex discrimination from a male manager, and Apple closed an investigation into the incident 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". Apple opened a second investigation into the allegations in August 2021, and she was placed on paid administrative leave.
Administrative leave, complaints, and firing
Gjøvik alleges that after raising concerns internally and speaking publicly about her concerns with Apple, she was retaliated against repeatedly, and was reassigned. On August 4, 2021, Apple placed her on paid administrative leave while they investigated some of her internal complaints, which she said she requested as a "last resort", and which she later described as "indefinite" and "forced" in a complaint, and referred to as a "suspension". Gjøvik subsequently 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. 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. In October 2021, Gjøvik filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), stating that Apple had made "false & misleading" statements by Apple to the SEC, citing that "Apple’s policies and practices clearly show a pattern of prohibiting employees from speaking about ," pertaining to Apple's no-action letter filed earlier that month that their "policy is not to use clauses". Cher Scarlett, a former Apple software engineer who had also been vocal about issues at the company, also filed a whistleblower tip with the SEC, providing the agency with a post-employment contract she was offered earlier that month. The no-action filing was subsequently denied by the SEC.
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 which stated she had "engaged in conduct that warrants termination of employment, including, but not limited to, violations of Apple policies." The violations cited by Apple were that she "disclosed confidential product-related information in violation of Apple policies" and that she "failed to cooperate and to provide accurate and complete information during the Apple investigatory process." Gjøvik has denied these allegations, referring to the termination as being due to speaking out and filing complaints about the company with multiple agencies. She later filed additional charges with the NLRB and the United States Department of Labor for retaliation, which are being investigated by the respective parties.
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.
See also
References
- ^ 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) - ^ 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) - ^ McGee, Patrick; Temple-West, Patrick (December 13, 2021). "Apple faces probe over whether it retaliated against whistleblower". Financial Times. Retrieved December 30, 2021.
- ^ 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) - "Apple manager 'placed on leave after raising sexism concerns'". Mail Online. 5 August 2021. Retrieved 31 December 2021.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Gjøvik, Ashley (16 September 2021). "I was fired from Apple after making several labor complaints against the company. Speaking out feels like going up against a powerful government". Business Insider. Retrieved 31 December 2021.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ 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) - ^ Bright, Martin (15 December 2021). ""Apple poisoned me: physically, mentally, spiritually"". Index on Censorship. Retrieved 31 December 2021.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - 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) - Feuer, Will (10 September 2021). "Apple fires manager for alleged leaks after she claimed harassment". New York Post. Retrieved 31 December 2021.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Browning, Kellen (13 December 2021). "The Labor Department is investigating Apple's treatment of employees". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 31 December 2021.
- 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.
- 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) - Gjøvik, Ashley (26 October 2021). "U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION COMPLAINT AGAINST APPLE INC. OCT 26 2021 MEMO" (PDF).
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Love, Julia; Nellis, Stephen (December 22, 2021). "U.S. SEC allows Apple shareholder's push for details on non-disclosure". Reuters. Retrieved December 30, 2021.
- Drange, Matt (22 November 2021). "Apple told the SEC it doesn't silence employees regarding workplace harassment or discrimination. New whistleblower documents show that isn't true". Business Insider. Retrieved 31 December 2021.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - Hays, Kali (16 September 2021). "Apple hit by another NLRB charge for firing senior manager who complained of harassment". Business Insider. Retrieved 31 December 2021.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - Fried, Ina (14 December 2021). "Labor Department digs into complaint against Apple". Axios. Retrieved 31 December 2021.
