The survey collected responses from 2,000 workers who opted to participate out of Apple’s 147,000 estimated workforce from last year, and shows that the 6% gap runs counter to the company’s claim that all genders “earn the same when engaging in similar work with comparable experience and performance.”
“We know pay equity was a problem in the past and Apple did something to fix it, but we’re having this conversation again because we’re seeing gaps in certain areas of the company and we want to know what Apple will do to prevent it from happening year-over-year,” said Cher Scarlett, a software engineer at Apple.
The survey also shows that Apple has far fewer women, non-binary and non-white people holding senior roles or in technical positions, which rank among the highest paid jobs. While Scarlett acknowledges that the survey is not scientific, “what we actually want is for Apple to do a third-party investigation into salary data, or an audit that we have insight into.”
Scarlett headed up the survey after Apple decided to prohibit earlier efforts by employees to collect pay data.