Former Apple worker sues for $5 mn, accusing firm of breaching New York paycheck law

Apple Inc. was accused in a lawsuit flouting a New York labor law by not issuing weekly paychecks to its store workers who do manual labor. 

Raven Ramos, who worked at Apple’s Fifth Ave. store in Manhattan for more than seven years, claims the company paid her every other week, rather than weekly, as required by state law. 

Filed Monday as a class action on behalf of other workers, the complaint seeks “well in excess” of $5 million from Apple for delayed compensation payments under a law often invoked in lawsuits against employers. Ramos says her job’s manual tasks included unboxing products, emptying cash registers and helping customers on the sales floor.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

J.P. Morgan drops Apple, Qualcomm from top picks as tech demand slows

(Reuters) - Slowing demand for smartphones is likely to hit growth at Apple and chipmaker Qualcomm, analysts at J.P. Morgan said on Friday as they dropped the companies from the list of most preferred stocks.

The removal from the brokerage's "Analyst Focus List" comes as analysts warn that fresh coronavirus lockdowns in China and rising cost of goods due to the Ukraine conflict could hurt smartphone demand in 2022.

Analyst Samik Chatterjee said a moderation in consumer spending would temper higher expectation from the recent iPhone SE launch, while a slowdown in gaming in China could weigh on Apple's services.

Apple is already planning to lower iPhone and AirPod production due to a demand slowdown, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Monday.

Qualcomm, meanwhile, will likely bear the brunt of weakness in the smartphone market for low- to mid-end Android handsets, Chatterjee said.

"There has been understandably a lot of noise around demand weakness across global tech, but we believe the macro weakness seeping through the sector will impact the consumer end-markets more materially," he said.

The brokerage still rates Apple and Qualcomm "overweight" — the equivalent of a "buy" rating — based on their longer-term potential.

J.P. Morgan said in an environment of slowing consumer demand it has added to its list network equipment companies Arista Networks and Ciena on hopes of a more resilient demand for telecom and cloud-related spending.