Ashley Gjøvik

Ashley Gjøvik
Born	1985/1986 (age 35–36)[1]
Occupation	Program manager
Known for	Whistleblowing at Apple Inc.

Ashley Gjøvik (born 1985 or 1986) is an American program manager and activist who is known for her whistleblowing and labor complaints against Apple Inc. After she raised her concerns about Apple in 2021, including those pertaining to possible environmental contamination at an Apple office that is built upon a Superfund site, Gjøvik alleged she experienced retaliation that ultimately ended in her firing.^[2][3] Apple fired her in September 2021 for allegedly leaking confidential intellectual property, which Gjøvik denies.^[1][4]

Education and career[]

Gjøvik completed a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Studies from Portland State University in 2012, and earned a Project Management Professional certification in 2013.^[5][6]

Gjøvik began working at Apple in 2015, and remained there until September 2021, by which time she had become a senior engineering program manager working out of their Sunnyvale, California office.^[3][4] While working at Apple, Gjøvik also studied transitional justice at University of Oxford and began a law degree at Santa Clara University.^[7][1] As of 2021, she was in her fourth year of law school at Santa Clara University. She also worked with a law group that helps asylum seekers, and has published writing about public health, privacy, and human rights.^[1]

Apple complaints[]

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After raising concerns internally with Apple, Gjøvik began speaking openly on Twitter and to press. Her allegations against Apple include mishandling of environmental concerns, violations of employee privacy, harassment, and retaliation. Her allegations were under investigation as of December 2021.^[8][3]

Environmental health and safety concerns[]

On March 17, 2021, Gjøvik received an email from Apple's environmental health and safety team notifying staff of forthcoming vapor intrusion testing at the Sunnyvale office building. She asked the team what type of testing had been done in the previous six years, and says she was told not to discuss her concerns with other employees.^[9][7] She continued to press Apple for information on the reasons for the environmental testing and its results, and says that she was subsequently harassed and humiliated.^[3][9][10]

The building, Stewart 1, leased by Apple in 2015,^[11] is located on a Superfund site called TRW Microwave, where toxic waste had been previously disposed of and leaked into the soil.^[12] During the 1980s and through 2008, the area was one of many in Silicon Valley to undergo a massive cleanup project.^[13][14] In 1994, a public health study done by the United States Department of Energy concluded that the only danger to public health was contaminated groundwater,^[15] which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says has placed preventative institutional controls to keep the affected water from coming into contact with people, including Hetch Hetchy, a reservoir for drinking water from the Sierra Nevada, and municipal wells filled from an undisturbed deep aquifer.^[16] In 2014, following a failed vapor intrusion test, the EPA determined that the issues had been sufficiently addressed and implemented new notification requirements to quickly mitigate any unacceptable levels.^[17][1][18] The EPA said that Apple did not open the location until indoor air sampling in 2015 confirmed the effectiveness of the remedies.^[19]

Gjøvik said she had fainted at work and did not know why, and that this had contributed to her concerns that Apple had not properly tested the site for contaminants. She also believed Apple had not sufficiently informed employees of the possible health issue.^[1] Ring of Fire correspondents reported that multiple employees have gotten sick and that Apple did not properly test the site, calling for government oversight and intervention.^[20] Gjøvik ultimately filed a complaint with the EPA^[1] and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).^[12]

Gjøvik said that when she asked Apple's employee relations team what options there were for her health-related concerns prior to the company-mandated return-to-office plans following the early COVID-19 pandemic, originally planned for September 1, 2021, but later delayed,^[21] the representative suggested she file an Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) accommodations request to continue working remotely. She said that the accommodation request did not sufficiently address her safety concerns, writing she had "serious concerns about [the] workplace safety of my building and Apple's other buildings on chemical release sites", but filed the request because it was the only option she was given. She said she was given a medical release form to fill out to allow a third-party processor, Sedgwick Claims Management, and Apple to access her medical records. Gjøvik said she refused to fill it out unless only Sedgwick was given access to her medical records. Gjøvik never received the accommodation.^[22]

Employee privacy concerns[]

Gjøvik has spoken publicly about privacy concerns as an Apple employee. In 2018, Gjøvik's engineering team was involved in a lawsuit, and because she had worked on a project that was relevant to the lawsuit, lawyers requested files from her phone and computer and told her not to delete any files. Gjøvik said her team had recommended against keeping separate phones for her personal and professional use, a practice that other Apple employees also said was commonplace.^[1][8] Gjøvik had personal documents on the phone, including nude photographs, and when she asked if she could delete the photographs, she said the lawyers said no.^[8]

"Glimmer", formerly known as "Gobbler", was an internal tool that was created to test Apple's Face ID software before its 2017 launch. The app took photos and brief videos when it sensed a face.^[8] Gjøvik described the app as "spyware", saying, "It was taking photos of me in my home, in my bathroom, in bed, anywhere I had my phone ... And it stored these photos somewhere and uploads them sometimes to some place—[Apple] didn't tell us much". Gjøvik had signed an informed consent form before the app was installed, though Gjøvik and other Apple staff have alleged that agreeing to help test software like Glimmer on company-owned devices was expected of them, with Gjøvik referring to the practice as a "loyalty test". Uploads containing photos or other sensitive data was done manually by employees. Some non-sensitive data was uploaded automatically unless employees turned it off.^[1][8]

Gjøvik spoke to press about her concerns pertaining to data privacy with an internal bug tracking tool called "Radar", which stores reports indefinitely and has broad defaults for employee access. Apple instructs its employees not to upload sensitive, confidential, or private data to work tools like Radar. Gjøvik filed a bug report in 2019 about Apple's photo search software returning "a selfie I took of myself in bed after laparoscopic surgery to treat my endometriosis" when she entered the search term "infant".^[8] The report could not be subsequently removed, and the default sharing settings allowed Apple's entire software engineering team to view the details of the report.^[8]

In September 2021, Gjøvik criticized Apple's employee privacy policy, which she says states that workers have no expectation of privacy when using a personal device for Apple business. She says the implication of possible employee surveillance under the policies led her to walk around her apartment and unplug all of her electronics and remove all of her personal information off of Apple's servers.^[23]

Harassment and discrimination[]

Gjøvik has alleged that Apple pressured her into revealing details of sexual harassment she had experienced after she mentioned the incident in an unrelated meeting with a member of Apple's human resources department. She said that Apple took no action related to her report except to reveal her to the employee she had accused.^[1] Gjøvik also complained to Apple about sex discrimination from a male manager, and Apple closed an investigation into the incident finding no wrongdoing. Following the closure of the investigation, she wrote on Twitter about the experience on August 2, 2021, "Wanted to share: #Apple employee relations confirmed this #tonepolicing is totally ok feedback for me to get from my #bigtech #male leaders & not #sexist. As this investigation rolls on, I've decided to start Tweeting the stuff they say is 'ok.' I mean, they did say it was ok?" In the tweet, she attached a screenshot of feedback from a manager who wrote that he "didn't hear you going up an octave at the end of your statements" and that she "came across as much more authoritative".^[2][4] Apple opened a second investigation into the allegations in August 2021, and she was placed on paid administrative leave.^[2] Apple has said they "don't discuss any individual employee matters, out of respect for the privacy of the people involved", and "are and have always been deeply committed to creating and maintaining a positive and inclusive workplace," and they "take all concerns seriously" and "thoroughly investigate whenever a concern is raised."^[24]

Administrative leave, complaints, and firing[]

Gjøvik alleges that after raising concerns internally and speaking publicly about her concerns with Apple, she was retaliated against repeatedly, and was reassigned.^[3] On August 4, 2021, Apple placed her on indefinite paid administrative leave, which she said she requested as a "last resort", and which she later described as "forced" in a complaint.^[2][4][25] Gjøvik subsequently filed various complaints about Apple with the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and the United States Department of Justice.^[26] Both the DFEH and EEOC issued Gjøvik right to sue letters, which enable her to file discrimination lawsuits at the state or federal level.^[27][24]

On August 26, 2021, Gjøvik filed a charge with the NLRB, alleging retaliation as well as harassment by a manager and forced administrative leave.^[28] In October 2021, Gjøvik filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about alleged false statements by Apple to the SEC, pertaining to Apple's no-action letter filed earlier that month stating that their "policy is not to use [concealment] clauses".^[29] Cher Scarlett also filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC about the no-action letter, providing the agency with a post-employment contract she was offered earlier that month.^[30] The no-action filing was subsequently denied by the SEC.^[29]

On September 9, 2021, a member of Apple's human resources team contacted her, asking to speak about "a sensitive Intellectual Property matter". Gjøvik replied that she would speak to them, but that the conversation would need to be captured in writing, and she would forward it to the NLRB.^[1][4] Apple replied, "Since you have chosen not to participate in the discussion ... we will move forward with the information that we have" and suspended her employee access. She was formally fired in a third email later that day which stated she had "engaged in conduct that warrants termination of employment, including, but not limited to, violations of Apple policies". The violations claimed by Apple were that she had "disclosed confidential product-related information in violation of Apple policies" and that she had "failed to cooperate and to provide accurate and complete information during the Apple investigatory process".^[1][4] Gjøvik has denied these allegations, referring to the termination as retaliation for speaking out and filing complaints about the company with multiple agencies. She later filed additional charges with the NLRB and the United States Department of Labor for retaliation, which are being investigated by the respective parties.^[25][31][32]

Gjøvik had previously posted on Twitter a photograph of herself that had been taken by Glimmer, and screenshots of an email that asked her to volunteer to have her ears 3D-scanned to aid in AirPods development. On September 15, 2021, she was asked to remove the two tweets in an email from the O'Melveny & Myers law firm, on behalf of Apple. The email claimed the tweets were violating a confidentiality agreement she had signed when she first joined the company. Gjøvik complied with the request to remove the tweets, though in communications via a lawyer to Apple she argued that the material she had shared was not labeled confidential and did not contain anything secret or proprietary, and that the photograph of her could not reasonably be argued to be copyrighted by Apple.^[1]

Following her termination and subsequent retaliation charges, Gjøvik filed an additional charge with the NLRB against Apple in October 2021 following news of a company-wide memo from Tim Cook sent to employees on September 21, 2021.^[10] The memo was criticized for conflating product leaks with employee activism around workplace conditions, and for including the line, "people who leak confidential information do not belong here," which some interpreted as threatening.^[33] Gjøvik alleged that the memo violated the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 in her charge, and additionally challenged several policies in the employee handbook that she said illegally inhibit staff from exercising their federally-protected rights to talk to the press, discuss wages, and post on social media. She, and some other legal professionals, believe that this particular charge, if prosecuted, could overturn a "Trump Era" precedent governing workplace policies involving Boeing from December 2017, which weigh employee rights against legitimate business interests.^[34][35] She also said she hopes to disrupt the company's culture of secrecy.^[10]

See also[]

• Apple worker organizations
• Frances Haugen
• Timnit Gebru
• Ifeoma Ozoma

References[]

External links[]

• Official website
• Ashley Gjøvik on Twitter