Apple fires employee who reported abuses due to alleged leaks

Apple has fired senior engineering program manager Ashley Gjøvik for allegedly leaking classified information about Apple products. Gjøvik has raised abuses within Apple in recent months via Twitter, among other things.

Gjøvik began reporting abuses within Apple in March, initially saying she was concerned about the safety of her workplace. For example, she worked in an Apple office that is located in a so-called superfund location. These superfund locations are locations that, according to the US government, are highly polluted and need to be remediated. Since Apple’s office is located in such a superfund location, the office should have been under special supervision. Gjøvik was concerned about this superfund location, according to The Verge.

After raising this within Apple, she admitted that she was being bullied by team members and managers. Later, she also began raising privacy issues and sexism within Apple. For example, three years ago, Gjøvik was forced to forward chat messages to Apple, where she was not allowed to delete chat messages. These messages also included nude selfies, which Apple has kept in a “permanent evidence vault,” according to Gjøvik.

In August, Gjøvik was sent on indefinite leave while Apple would investigate the alleged abuses. In the meantime, Gjøvik was not allowed to talk to female colleagues about the abuses and was banned from Apple’s Slack channels. Last week, a national employment agency said it was opening an investigation into abuses within Apple after complaints from Gjøvik, among others, Reuters writes.

Thursday Gjøvik received an email from Apple’s Threat Assessment & Workplace Violence team asking if they could call on the day. The team would investigate a “serious Intellectual Property matter” that they would like to discuss with Gjøvik. Gjøvik responded by asking if the questions could be sent by e-mail, so that everything would remain on paper. Hours later, Gjøvik received the email that her contract was terminated on Friday. Apple says it cannot speak to The Verge about individual employee issues.