Tech giant maintains this was 'not intentional discrimination'
Tech giant Apple will be paying up to $25 million to resolve discrimination practices that it allegedly committed under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ).
The DOJ announced on Thursday that Apple agreed to pay $6.75 million in civil penalties and establish an $18.25 million back pay fund for eligible discrimination victims.
This is the biggest award the department has recovered under the anti-discrimination provision of the INA, the DOJ said.
Apple is accused of engaging in a pattern of discriminatory recruitment based on citizenship status for positions it sought to fill through the permanent labour certification programme (PERM).
PERM, which is under the US Department of Labour and the US Department of Homeland Security, allows employers to hire a foreign worker to work permanently in the United States.
The DOJ said it found reasonable cause that Apple "preferred workers holding temporary employment visas for PERM-related positions based on their citizenship status instead of qualified and available U.S. applicants."
"Apple followed different procedures designed to favour the temporary visa holder and deter U.S. applicants," said the Settlement Agreement published by the DOJ.
These procedures included the tech giant reportedly not advertising positions on its external job website and requiring all applicants to mail paper applications.
"These less effective recruitment procedures deterred U.S. applicants from applying and nearly always resulted in zero or very few mailed applications that Apple considered for PERM-related positions, which allowed Apple to fill the positions with temporary visa holders," the DOJ document said.
Apple, however, denied that it engaged in the discriminatory practices and maintained that it followed the recruitment steps under the PERM programme.
It added that the alleged failures were the result of "inadvertent error and not intentional discrimination."
Agreeing in the settlement was not Apple's admission to any guilt or liability, according to the tech giant.
A spokesperson from Apple told CNBC that they agreed to a settlement after realising they had "unintentionally not been following the DOJ standard."
"We have implemented a robust remediation plan to comply with the requirements of various government agencies as we continue to hire American workers and grow in the U.S.," the spokesperson told the news outlet.
In addition to the millions of penalties and back pay, the settlement will also see Apple posting PERM positions on its external job website.
It would also see the tech giant accept electronic applications and enable PERM positions to be searchable in its applicant tracking system.
Apple will also train its employees on INA's anti-discrimination requirements and will be under departmental monitoring for a three-year period.
Assistant Attorney-General Kristen Clarke from the DOJ's Civil Rights Division said the resolution reflects their division's commitment to ending illegal discriminatory employment practices.
"Creating unlawful barriers that make it harder for someone to seek a job because of their citizenship status will not be tolerated," Clarke said in a statement.
