Apple to pay $25M for discriminating against U.S. workers

Apple has agreed to pay up to $25 million in backpay and civil penalties for discriminatory hiring practices, the Department of Justice said Thursday. The DOJ began investigating Apple in 2019. It later accused the company of discriminating against U.S. citizens and green card holders. Apple took part in a federal program called the Permanent Labor Certification Program, or PERM, which allowed companies to sponsor immigrant workers to secure green cards. U.S. workers may still apply for PERM-eligible job openings. The DOJ’s investigation found that Apple did not advertise PERM-eligible jobs online as they did all other openings that required applicants to submit paper applications. The DOJ said the skewed recruitment methods “nearly always resulted in few or no applications” from U.S. citizens or green card holders.

What happens now? The tech giant will pay $6.75 million in civil penalties and $18.25 million in restitution to affected workers, resulting in the DOJ’s largest-ever case settlement related to the Immigration and Nationality Act. Apple said it has “implemented a robust remediation plan” to better comply with government hiring standards that recruiters “unintentionally” broke.

Dig deeper: Read John Dawson’s report for WORLD Magazine, which takes a numeric inventory of Apple.