Apple employees balking at company's return to office plans

SANTA CLARA (CBS SF/CNN) -- After working remotely for more than two years, a group of Apple employees are demanding more flexibility in the tech giant's 3 day-a-week return to the office plans beginning at the end of May.

The employees, organizing under a newly-formed group known as Apple Together that advocates for workers' well-being and rights, sent a letter to Apple executives outlining their concerns.

"We are not asking for everyone to be forced to work from home," the letter provided to CNN reads. "We are asking to decide for ourselves, together with our teams and direct manager, what kind of work arrangement works best for each one of us, be that in an office, work from home, or a hybrid approach."

Apple did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment on the letter and did not respond to an earlier request for comment on its return-to-work plans.

Apple's hybrid return pilot initially drew backlash in June 2021 after it was outlined to staffers, but Apple, like most companies, pushed back the rollout as a result of new COVID-19 variants in the fall and winter.

Following the delays, Apple began its phased approach to getting workers back into the office, beginning with once a week at the beginning of April before upping to twice a week more recently. The company outlined its most recent timeline for employees in an email, the text of which was published by The Verge.

Friday's letter, which calls the pilot a "step back in flexibility for many of our teams," comes in anticipation of the last phase of Apple's pilot, which is slated to go into effect at the end of May, where workers will be expected in the office on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

It spells out specific reasons they're taking issue with the pilot, ranging from forcing workers to unnecessarily commute - "a huge waste of time as well as both mental and physical resources" - to what they see as an inevitable impact on diversity.

"Apple will likely always find people willing to work here, but ... being in the office at least 3 fixed days of the week ... will make Apple younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied, in short, it will lead to privileges deciding who can work for Apple, not who'd be the best fit," the letter contended.

One of the organizers, an employee who works on hardware engineering in the Bay Area and asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, told CNN Business that there are roughly 200 workers who are engaged with Apple Together.

By contrast, Apple Together says the company has more than 100,000 employees in the United States including its retail workforce.