Apple fires hundreds of contract workers, company previously assured their jobs were safe

It has now come to light that Apple has fired hundreds of contractor workers who are basically hired by third-party agencies but work with Apple employees on projects.

By Ankita Garg: Apple has fired hundreds of contract workers. This might come as a surprise to many, considering the company’s CEO Tim Cook recently asserted that layoffs are something that will be a “last resort kind of thing.” But, he also said that “you can never say never” when the CEO was asked about whether Apple also has plans to layoff, just like Amazon, Microsoft, and others.

It has now come to light that Apple has sacked hundreds of contractor workers who are basically hired by third-party agencies but work with Apple employees on projects, people who are familiar with the matter told the New York Times. The company has quietly sacked workers in order to cut costs, as per the cited source.

The impacted workers have contracts of up to 15 months with Apple, but the company isn’t waiting for their contracts to expire and is removing them outright. One of the contractors reportedly said that Apple previously assured the workers that their jobs were safe, a promise that the company broke.

The tech giant recently boasted that it is “managing costs very tightly and is curtailing hiring in certain areas, while continuing to hire in others.”

But, the latest move reveals a different story altogether. As we have been witnessing industry-wide layoffs since last year, Apple was the only company that was appreciated for managing resources appropriately and avoiding mass layoffs.

The cited source is saying that Apple doesn’t consider contractors as their employees and so job cuts for such workers are not regarded as layoff in the company. It is being said that firing contractors is an easier choice for Apple considering it won’t have to pay severance or “face potential litigation from employees alleging wrongful termination,” a report from NYT said.

As of now, there are no details of how many contract workers Apple might have in total, but several reports claim that the number is in the thousands. The cited source reported that the tech company has about dozens of staffing firms that help Apple with “project management, launch events and even creating Apple Maps.”

Besides, big tech companies like Google recently announced the layoff of 12,000 employees, of which more than 400 people got laid off in India last night. Just a few weeks after Elon Musk bought Twitter, he sacked most of the employees across globe to save costs and to rebuild teams. Microsoft also sacked 10,000 people and Meta remove 11,000 employees.

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