Ashley Gjøvik

Ashley Gjøvik is an American program manager and activist who is known for her labor complaints against Apple Inc. Gjøvik was terminated in 2021 by Apple for allegedly leaking confidential intellectual property, which she denied. Gjøvik alleged her firing was retaliation for speaking out against the company.

Gjøvik filed several National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaints against Apple, including two regarding employee rules that were found to have merit in January 2023. In October 2024, the NLRB charged Apple with maintaining illegal employment agreements and enforcing overly broad rules around employee misconduct and use of social media.

Education and career

Gjøvik studied literature with an intent to get a Master of Fine Arts. She received a bachelor's degree at Portland State University. After working at Nike, Inc., she joined Apple in 2015. In 2016, she became an engineering program manager for Apple working out of their Sunnyvale office. She spent several months on paid leave between 2020–2021. While employed at Apple, Gjøvik studied public international law and human rights at Santa Clara University. She received a Juris Doctor. After being terminated from Apple in September 2021, she worked as an intern at an immigration clinic that helps asylum seekers.

Labor issues and concerns at Apple

In July 2021, Apple investigated Gjøvik's allegations of sex discrimination from a male manager. On August 2, following the closure of the investigation finding no wrongdoing, she wrote on Twitter about the experience, alleging she was tone policed and received critical feedback for upspeak which gained national attention. In an interview with ''The Verge'', Gjøvik said she asked Apple to "mitigate the hostile work environment", adding that, "if there was no other option", she would accept paid administration leave. She said they made no effort to "set up oversight and boundaries" with leadership, and she was instead placed on the second of two paid leaves while the company re-investigated her claims.

Termination and labor complaints

On August 26, 2021, Gjøvik filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), alleging retaliation, harassment, and forced administrative leave. A few days later, ''The Verge'' published an article in which she and other Apple employees told the publication they were discouraged from keeping separate phones for personal and professional use and were expected to help test software with informed consent. Program manager Janneke Parrish also said this in an interview. Apple instructs its employees not to upload sensitive, confidential, or private data to work tools. In the article, and on social media, Gjøvik raised employee privacy concerns about legal holds and the data Apple collects through its internal tools. She spoke of data privacy concerns of internal tools such as a bug tracking tool called "Radar" and an app for testing Face ID, "Glimmer," which took photos and brief videos when it sensed a face. A screen recording taken by Gjøvik was included in the article and in a tweet.

The following week, on September 9, Gjøvik was contacted by Apple's human resources team about an investigation into "a sensitive Intellectual Property matter". After Gjøvik offered to participate in the investigation only by email, she was suspended and subsequently terminated. Apple said she had "disclosed confidential product-related information in violation of Apple policies" and that she had "failed to cooperate and to provide accurate and complete information during the Apple investigatory process". She received a letter from O'Melveny & Myers on behalf of Apple stating that the tweet with the video of Glimmer was "a violation ... of a confidentiality agreement she’d signed". She deleted it, though she objected to the legal grounds. Gjøvik alleged her termination was retaliatory for speaking out about environmental concerns, harassment, and sexism. She filed a complaint with the NLRB, asking for reinstatement.

Gjøvik filed two additional charges with the NLRB against Apple the following month, after a company-wide memo from Tim Cook was leaked to the press on September 21, 2021. The memo was criticized for conflating product leaks with employee activism around workplace conditions, and for including the line, "people who leak confidential information do not belong here," which some interpreted as threatening. Gjøvik alleged that the memo and several other policies in the employee handbook illegally inhibit staff from exercising their federally-protected rights to talk to the press, discuss wages, and post on social media.

On October 1, 2024, the NLRB charged Apple with one of five charges found to have merit in 2023, two of which were brought by Gjøvik, that "various work rules, handbook rules, and confidentiality rules" imposed by Apple and its executives "tend to interfere with, restrain or coerce employees" from exercising their legal rights to collective action and to speak with the media. The NLRB's charge accused Apple of "interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees in the exercise of" federal labor laws by requiring they sign unlawful employment agreements, that included confidentiality, non-compete, and non-disclosure clauses, and for enforcing overly broad rules about misconduct and social media usage. The NLRB has not yet ruled in response to Gjøvik's individual charges.

Gjøvik filed a retaliation lawsuit against Apple in California for complaints she made with federal and state agencies in September 2023, which was mostly dismissed on October 1, 2024. In February 2025, Judge Edward M. Chen determined that Gjøvik had adequately alleged that Apple violated the California Whistleblower Act for a complaint filed with the California Department of Industrial Relations over her environmental concerns about the Superfund site. The claim had previously been dismissed due to the one year statute of limitations, but Chen said the doctrine of equitable tolling applied.

See also

* Sexism in the technology industry
* History of Apple Inc.
* Litigation involving Apple Inc.
* Criticism of Apple Inc.

Notes

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gjovik, Ashley

1980s births
American whistleblowers
Apple Inc. employees
Living people
Portland State University alumni
American workers' rights activists
Year of birth missing (living people)
American environmentalists
Santa Clara University School of Law alumni