By Yusoff A. Shariff
APPLE Inc has been sued by a senior manager, who claimed that he was denied a retention bonus of at least US$800,000 (RM3.71mil) because his age was 64, and no longer considered “as part of Apple’s future”.
In a lawsuit file on Oct 3 in a federal court in San Jose, California, Donald Shruhan Jr, who has worked for Apple since 2008 and is now 67, alleges that he was not awarded restricted stock units (RSU) or a merit increase in 2019 although he was given an excellent performance review, reports Bloomberg.
He claims that last year he was asked to submit his plan for retirement, although he had not planned to retire. He argued that this was an age-based assumption on the decision maker’s part, with no basis in fact.
According to the complaint, Apple planned to demote him. Apple did not immediately respond on the lawsuit.
Shruhan says he’s a victim of discrimination against older workers in Silicon Valley, which is “obsessed with youth”.
Citing a 2015 Payscale survey, he says that while the median age of a US worker is 42, it is 31 at Apple.
Shruhan is a director in Apple’s Intellectual Property Enforcement unit, where he has managed efforts to combat counterfeiting in the Asia-Pacific region, and has also served as a veteran senior manager on Apple’s global security team, he said.
In the two preceding years after Shruhan claimed that he earned excellent reviews, he was given restricted stock units valued at US$850,000 (RM3.95mil) and US$800,000 (RM3.71mil), he claims.
For 2019, Apple said he would not get his RSUs because they were meant to be “an investment in the future and a retention hook”, according to his lawsuit.
A supervisor’s response to his inquiry revealed that Apple no longer saw a need to incentivise him because he was nearing retirement age.
With no progress in dealing with Apple’s human resources department, Shruhan said he had decided to sue.
He seeks unspecified monetary damages for emotional distress, as well as a civil penalty against Apple under California’s unfair competition law.
-BTS Media
