“In half a day in this single Opera store, Apple will generate the money we are asking for for all of France.” In Paris, in front of one of the main Apple stores in France, a line of customers eager to treat themselves to the new iPhone 15, marketed for the first time on Friday, September 22, rubbed shoulders with several dozen employees of the American brand, on strike to demand a increase in their salary above inflation. On Wednesday, the Apple Retail France union (CGT, UNSA, CFDT and Cidre-CFTC) called for a strike without blockages in the company’s twenty stores in France.
“We are not here to prevent the sale of iPhones but to have a decent salary,” Renaud Chateauroux, CFDT union representative, repeated to the numerous media present, adding to Agence France-Presse that “management has proposed an increase by 4.5% this summer, which is much less than the cost of living and inflation. We are asking for 7% and a freeze on recruitment. We’ve lost four hundred jobs since the start of the year, and we don’t have any fewer customers.”
The union representative clarified that the strikers were “also there for [their] colleagues in the United Kingdom, Japan, Spain, Italy and Australia, who cannot speak.” Max Leva, CGT union delegate present in front of the Parisian brand, estimated that “the social dialogue has really changed, the tone has risen. Management tells us that we are well off, even though the profits generated by the company are immense.” Apple France has not yet commented on the claims.
Presented on September 12, the iPhone 15 range has the particularity, in addition to brighter screens, more sophisticated lenses and more advanced computer chips, of presenting a universal USB-C charging port in compliance with a European law which will impose it ‘by the end of 2024. The device is marketed from 969 euros.