It looks like the summer of 2012 is a good time to work for Apple. According to reports today Apple Store employees are being given better discounts on Apple products, and some are receiving raises as high as 25-30%. The discount program is the fulfillment of a promise made back in January by Tim Cook, while the raises appear to be at least partly in response to anonymous complaints that employees were underpaid.
According to 9to5Mac, as of today Apple Store employees can get $500 off Macs (except the retina display MacBook Pro) and $250 off iPads when purchasing through their employee web portal. Employees already got 25% off of every Apple product. These discounts are in addition to that. Which means that if you work in an Apple Store, as of today you could get the most expensive iPad – 64GB with cellular, normally $829 – for $371.75. That, for those of you playing the home game, is almost $130 cheaper than the cheapest iPad, the 16GB WiFi only, which normally costs $499. Of course, there’s a catch: employees can only use the discounts once every three years.
Now, earlier in the week we brought you news that Apple Store employees would be getting across-the-board raises of about $4 per hour. Later information revealed cast some doubt on that, however. But now it appears that a significant raise really is in the cards for at least some Apple Store employees. According to the Dow Jones Newswire, some Apple Store employees were notified of the raises in meetings as early as last week.
According to the report, the raises – which are merit based – could amount to as much as 25% of an employee’s current salary. It seems that Apple chose to make the move following an internal review, during which one of the employees’ chief complaints was that they were not adequately compensated. It seems that Geniuses and Creatives – tech support and educational employees, respectively – showed the highest levels of frustration with their pay.
Employees who are receiving raises should expect to begin seeing them reflected in their paycheck beginning in late July.
So, to recap: Apple is giving retail employees significant new discounts on Apple products, while also giving many of them extra money with which to pay for those new products (or, you know, to pay the electric bill; whatever floats your boat). All in all, not a bad time to be an Apple employee.