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Union Busting Apple Wants Whistleblower Gjovik To Stop Saying "Menstruation" On Internet
Union busting Apple corporation is starting to panic. It may have to go to trial for illegally firing Apple senior engineering program manager Ashley Gjovik who blew the whistle over serious toxin contamination at her office and next to her apartment where an illegally built fabrication factory was sending out fumes. Now her court hearing is coming up and they are panicking it will go to trial.
Apple Wants Me Sanctioned For Saying "menstruation" On The Internet. Here are my responses.
Apple filed an emergency letter with a federal court demanding sanctions, contempt, a restraining order on my speech, and deletion of my blog post and social media posts about my NLRB charges. They wanted an unrecorded phone call within 24 hours to make it happen. No motions, no evidence, no briefing, no court reporter, and no public visibility to what happens. Apple wanted my coworkers to know Apple was getting me called into detention with a Judge, but they didn't want anyone to see what was said or understand what the outcome was, other than it was all happening because Apple called me a "leaker" when I complained about work conditions and demanded that Apple be a better employer.
Apple's lawyers even emailed me demanding I delete social media posts and blog posts that they wanted me to self-identify as "leaking" about work conditions. I told Apple's lawyers to eat rocks. Then they escalated to a federal court, accusing me of gross misconduct and saying I'm causing irreparable harm to Apple, and cited and quoted my NLRB charges against Apple alleging that Apple violated the NLRA.
Apple also repeatedly claimed that me complaining about Apple's intrusive requests, monitoring, questioning and "studies" of employee genital secretions was also Apple Confidential and suggested I was "breaching" court Orders (that's asking a court to hold me in contempt), and should be forced to delete my posts (that's sanctions/injunctive relief), and be ordered to stop "leaking" (that's a prior restraint gag order).
I, once again, told Apple's lawyers to eat rocks.
During this period of time Apple accumulated three new NLRB charges like it was collecting Pokémon cards.
....
Apple did manage to get a next-day cryptic, non-public, non-recorded, evidence-free "telephonic discovery conference" scheduled for Feb. 20 2026 where I was denied a request to have time to even file an Opposition, and my objections demanding evidence, proper motions and briefing, a Court Reporter and basic Due Process were all implicitly denied.
So basically recreating that Sept. 9 2021 email from Apple's Workplace Violence team demanding I get on the phone with their interrogator and then firing me for "non-cooperation" when I said I wanted a record of the conversation because I thought they were going to hurt me, which of course they were and having a record of them doing that makes it more difficult for them to do with the flare they so enjoy.
I filed three responses today across two federal courts: an Opposition and a Motion to Quash in the US District Court, and a Motion for Sanctions in the Bankruptcy Court for Apple's violation of the automatic stay. They're linked and attached below. There are copies of all of the new NLRB charges attached to the Opposition filing if you'd like to review this incredible progress we're making on documenting Apple's absolutely ridiculous behavior.
To that point, none of Apple's behavior is surprising. This is what old, crotchety Big Tech employers do when they're not used to employees organizing and pushing back. They clearly think they can get away with unfair labor practices and overt retaliation because they've always gotten away with it. Their entire playbook depends on employees being too scared or too broke to fight.
I also think Apple is flipping out right now because I managed to escape out of that dank submarine cesspool bunker in Boston I had been trapped in for a couple years. I was back in Santa Clara County for only two weeks catching up on many overdue filings and litigation deliverables. Apple's lawyers apparently had become complacent with me being mostly incapacitated, and so they apparently panicked to see me back in action. So they did... this?!
Listen, even if the court or NLRB won't intervene, even if every institution that's supposed to protect workers fails — this is how employees do it. You just keep pushing back. You hold the line. You expose the truth. You call them out. You might get slowed down by personal stuff here and there, but you bounce back. You tell them to eat rocks when they're union busting. You put it all on the record. You make them do their dirt in public. And you don't stop.
When they freak out like this, you file more charges. You document the freakout and you push harder. Someday they're going to have to budge and you swoop in and you get bargaining agreement signed immediately - do not release your pressure for one moment or they will squirm away like the little worms they are.
Apple's letter complained to the court that I was orchestrating a "campaign" to expose their suppression of worker complaints. Yes. That's what labor organizing is. Welcome to it, Apple.
APPLE CLAIMS IT OWNS ITS EMPLOYEES' CERVICAL
MUCUS: A NEW NLRB CHARGE REVEALS THE LOGICAL
ENDPOINT OF CORPORATE CONFIDENTIALITY ABUSE
https://www.ashleygjovik.com/blog/apple-claims-it-owns-its-employees-cervical-mucus-a-new-nlrb-charge-reveals-the-logical-endpoint-of-corporate-confidentiality-abuse
2/16/20260 Comments
On February 16, 2026, I filed a new unfair labor practice charge against Apple Inc. with NLRB. The charge contains ten counts alleging violations of Sections 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(4) of the National Labor Relations Act. The accompanying cover letter, complete with deposition transcript excerpts, paints a picture so extraordinary that it warrants serious attention from labor law practitioners, employment scholars, and anyone interested in the boundaries of corporate power over employees' bodies and speech.
The short version: Apple's lawyers designated an employee's deposition testimony about my own cervical mucus, ovulation, and menstrual cycle as Apple's confidential business information, then told me that if I disagreed, I could write Apple a memorandum explaining why my bodily secretions don't belong to the company. The long version is even worse.
Background: The Settlement That Should Have Ended This
My earlier charges (Case 32-CA-284428 and related cases) resulted in a General Counsel complaint and a national settlement agreement reached in April 2025. That settlement required Apple to rescind overbroad confidentiality policies that restricted employees' Section 7 rights, post a nationwide notice promising not to discipline employees for discussing working conditions, and agree not to enforce its definition of "Proprietary Information" to the extent it covered terms and conditions of employment. The settlement included a catch-all: Apple promised not to "in any like or related manner interfere with your rights under Section 7."
Critically, the settlement contained a self-executing default provision. Upon non-compliance, the Regional Director would reissue the October 2024 complaint, Apple's allegations would be deemed admitted, its answer withdrawn, and the Board could enter a full remedy order without trial. A Court of Appeals judgment could be entered ex parte. That provision matters for everything that follows.
.....
The December 16, 2025 Deposition
I was deposed in my federal retaliation lawsuit against Apple on December 16, 2025. The deposition was taken by Apple's counsel (a senior partner at a major firm). What happened during that deposition, as documented in the charge's cover letter and attached transcript excerpts, forms the factual core of the new charge. Apple's counsel questioned me about Apple's misconduct and discipline policy — the same type of policy that was the subject of the prior NLRB settlement. When asked whether I understood that violating confidentiality obligations could warrant immediate termination, I responded that I didn't understand the policy's terms, that they were overbroad, and that "NLRB said those terms were unlawful and that Apple could no longer enforce them and had to withdraw them from their policies."
Apple's counsel responded by immediately designating the entire remainder of the deposition as "Confidential" pursuant to the civil litigation's protective order. The exchange, as quoted in the charge, is striking. When I objected that the designation was premature, Apple's counsel didn't know what I would say next and couldn't pre-designate unknown testimony; then Apple's counsel asserted the procedural right to pre-designate under the protective order and told me to use the order's challenge procedures if I disagreed. When I protested that Apple was "misusing confidentiality terms" to "hide protected statements" immediately after I invoked the NLRA, Apple's counsel called a break, then designated pages 66 through 305 (of a 336-page transcript) as confidential. Approximately 72% of the deposition was designated as confidential.
Seven Weeks of Silence
The blanket designation remained in effect for seven weeks — 50 days!!! — until February 4, 2026. During that period, I was supposedly unable to discuss the substance of my own testimony, including my descriptions of protected concerted activity and my invocation of NLRA rights, with coworkers, the public, or the NLRB.
When Apple finally narrowed its designations, approximately 99% of the previously designated material was conceded to be non-confidential. This is legally significant because the protective order itself prohibited "mass, indiscriminate, or routinized designations" and required that designations be limited to "specific material that qualifies under appropriate standards." A blanket designation covering 72% of a deposition, maintained for 50 days, where 99% is ultimately conceded to be non-confidential, appears to violate the very order Apple invoked to justify the designation.
What Apple Claims to Own
When the narrowed designations finally arrived on February 4, 2026, they came on an unsigned, undated six-page PDF that Apple refused to email to me directly, refused to sign, and refused to date. Apple emailed it to the court reporter and said it was for my "awareness." The final designation list contained over 140 terms. Some were facially absurd — the letter "N," the word "hardware," and generic engineering development phrases. But the designations that matter most for NLRA purposes are the ones Apple applied to the substance of my protected concerted activity.
The charge quotes three deposition excerpts where I testified about my complaints to my supervisor regarding Apple's invasive workplace studies. In these excerpts, I described:
An ovulation study where Apple asked female employees to measure their cervical mucus
A bed-sensor study that monitored vitals during sleep and required any sexual partner or co-sleeper to register with Apple and sign an NDA
An ear scanning study that I declined, describing the physical discomfort and my objection to Apple maintaining a library of employees' ear images
This testimony (an employee describing my complaints about workplace conditions to my supervisor and to coworkers) is textbook protected concerted activity under Section 7. I was testifying about raising concerns on behalf of myself and my coworkers about invasive employer practices directed at their bodies. Apple's active confidentiality designations, as documented in the charge, include: "ovulation study or they were asking females to measure our cervical mucus," "ovulation," "measuring female employees' cervical mucus," "my cervical mucus," and "mucus -- the cervical mucus secretion."
Each of these was individually designated across multiple separate deposition excerpts. This was not a single overbroad designation that inadvertently swept in bodily terminology. Someone at Apple's law firm reviewed the transcript, identified each instance where I described what Apple asked my body to do, and separately flagged it as Apple Confidential.
As I state in the charge: "Apple does not own my vagina, has no legitimate interest in who I have sex with, and its outrageous Apple would even imply it could make these claims."
The April 2025 settlement included several specific commitments that appear to be directly contradicted by Apple's deposition conduct:
The revised IPA preserves the right to "discuss or disclose information about Your or others' wages, hours, or working conditions." Apple designated testimony about working conditions as confidential.
The notice posting promises Apple will not "advise you that you are subject to discipline for violating overly broad rules regarding confidential or proprietary information." Apple's counsel asked under oath whether discussing working conditions was "a breach of your confidentiality obligations."
Apple agreed not to enforce its definition of "Proprietary Information" to cover terms and conditions of employment. Apple's confidentiality designations enforce that definition through the protective order mechanism.
Violation of a Board settlement resolving 8(a)(1) charges is itself an independent 8(a)(1) violation. And the default provision means the remedy upon non-compliance is potentially automatic: deemed admissions, no trial, and ex parte Court of Appeals enforcement.
The "Whitelisting" of Section 7 Rights
Perhaps the most doctrinally significant allegation concerns Apple's counsel's repeated questioning about whether one of my coworkers was "whitelisted" to receive information about working conditions. The deposition excerpts in the charge show Apple's counsel asking whether I was "permitted" to share information with a coworker, whether the coworker was "whitelisted," and — when I stated I didn't understand the question — spelling out: "How about allowed? A-L-L-O-W-E-D?"
This line of questioning establishes a framework where the right to discuss working conditions is conditioned on employer authorization. Under Section 7, that right is unconditional. An employee does not need to be "permitted" or "allowed" or "whitelisted" to discuss wages, hours, or working conditions with a coworker. The right is statutory.
The charge argues that Apple's questioning creates a work rule permitting discussion of employer misconduct only among its victims (those who were also "whitelisted" for the same surveillance) and treating discussion with any other coworker as a confidentiality breach. This is a per se violation of Section 8(a)(1). The Board has consistently held that employer rules conditioning Section 7 activity on prior authorization are unlawful.
24/7 Surveillance from Personal Devices
The charge also alleges that Apple placed my cell phone and iCloud account on a "whitelist" (a different use of the same term) that caused continuous, 24/7 capture and automatic upload of photographs, video, audio recordings, biometric data, and GPS location whenever the camera detected a face — inside and outside the workplace, including in my home and including images in states of undress.
Under National Steel & Shipbuilding Co., 324 NLRB 499 (1997), and Aladdin Gaming, LLC, 345 NLRB 585 (2005), employer surveillance that would reasonably tend to coerce employees in the exercise of Section 7 rights violates Section 8(a)(1). The standard is objective: the question is whether the surveillance would chill a reasonable employee, not whether the employer intended to suppress union activity. The charge notes that the surveillance captured communications with coworkers about working conditions, communications with the NLRB, communications with journalists, and organizing discussions.
This would represent an unprecedented scope of employer surveillance in Board case law — continuous audio, video, biometric, and location capture from a personal device, 24/7, extending into the employee's home.
Garmon Preemption and the Forum Problem
Count 10 of the charge raises a preemption argument that, whatever its outcome, illustrates the institutional trap the case has created. Under San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U.S. 236 (1959), when activity is arguably subject to Section 7 or Section 8, federal courts must defer to the Board's exclusive competence. Under Lodge 76, IAM v. WERC, 427 U.S. 132 (1976), preemptive jurisdiction extends to conduct Congress intended to leave unregulated as well as conduct it intended to regulate.
The charge argues that Apple's insistence that my "only option" is to challenge the confidentiality designations through the federal court (via memoranda to Apple and escalation to the Magistrate Judge) constitutes a prohibition on filing NLRB charges and an assertion that the protective order stripped the Board of jurisdiction. If the Board agrees, the federal court lacks jurisdiction over these NLRA questions. If the Board disagrees or declines to act, it is effectively ceding jurisdiction over claims expressly about NLRA charges, protected concerted activity, and Board proceedings to a court that (as documented in the same charge) coerced the employee into stipulating to the very protective order at issue while the employer's counsel discussed the foreseeable possibility of driving the employee to suicide.
The Institutional Dynamics
The charge does not exist in a vacuum. As I noted, I previously filed a charge alleging Apple violated the April 2025 settlement through its litigation conduct in the same federal case. The Region and Compliance Office declined to investigate or take action, and refused to state findings in writing. This occurred, the charge notes, after Apple's own former defense counsel was appointed as the new NLRB General Counsel. The charge argues that the Region's prior refusal to act emboldened Apple, and that Apple's conduct has escalated since the first reported violation went unenforced. The charge presents this as a pattern: each time the Board declines to enforce its own settlement, Apple pushes further.
This creates an institutional dilemma that the charge's structure appears designed to exploit. If the Board declines to act on this charge, it will have reviewed a filing documenting Apple designating employees' cervical mucus as confidential business information, interrogating a former employee about whether discussing working conditions with coworkers was a policy violation, and maintaining a 50-day blanket gag order on protected activity that was 99% unjustified (all in violation of a settlement the Board itself brokered) and decided that none of this warranted investigation.
What makes this charge notable beyond its individual allegations is its structural design. The charge is simultaneously:
An NLRB filing that creates a federal agency record of Apple's conduct;
A vehicle for public disclosure of the specific terms and testimony Apple designated as confidential because its absurd and clearly illegal;
A court docket filing via the notice of pendency, placing the material before the judge who controls the protective order;
A settlement enforcement mechanism that may trigger automatic default remedies;
A documented dare — paragraph 48 expressly states that if Apple seeks sanctions for the disclosures in the charge, another charge will be filed.
Each function reinforces the others. The NLRB filing is protected activity under Section 8(a)(4), making any Apple retaliation for the filing itself a new violation. The public disclosure through the NLRB filing renders the confidentiality designations functionally moot for the disclosed terms. The court docket filing puts the judge on notice of the parallel Board proceeding and the Garmon preemption issue. And the settlement enforcement argument converts each documented violation into a potential trigger for the automatic default provision.
The Limits of Confidentiality as a Weapon
This case, if credited, represents something genuinely new in NLRB practice: an employer using a civil litigation protective order (one the employer selected, insisted upon, and applied) to reimpose the substance of confidentiality policies the employer agreed to rescind in a Board settlement. It is, in effect, an end-run around the settlement through a different procedural mechanism, using the deference courts give to confidentiality designations in discovery to achieve what the NLRA prohibits.
The specific content of Apple's designations makes this more than a procedural dispute. When an employer claims that an employee's testimony about my own cervical mucus is the employer's confidential business information — repeatedly, deliberately, across multiple transcript excerpts — it has moved past any recognizable assertion of trade secret protection into something that more closely resembles a claim of ownership over the employee's body and the employee's right to describe what was done to it.
The National Labor Relations Act was enacted to protect employees' right to discuss their working conditions. When those working conditions include employer-directed monitoring of female employees' reproductive biology, the right to discuss those conditions necessarily includes the right to use the words that describe them. Ovulation. Cervical mucus. Menstruation. These are not engineering specifications or product roadmaps. An employee's right to protest those practices to coworkers, to the NLRB, to the public — cannot be extinguished by placing those words on an unsigned PDF and calling them proprietary.
Whether the current Board will act on this charge is an open question. What is not an open question is that the charge and its supporting materials are now part of the public record — on the NLRB's docket, on the federal court's docket, and in the hands of anyone who cares to read them. The file will outlast every person currently sitting in a position to act on it or ignore it. And the default provision, loaded and waiting, does not expire with any particular General Counsel's term.
Apple's lawyers may have had the procedural right to designate deposition testimony as confidential. What they did not have was the right to designate protected concerted activity as confidential, the right to condition Section 7 activity on employer authorization, or the right to claim ownership over an employee's bodily secretions. The transcript documents them doing all three, on the record, while the court reporter typed.
The charge was filed with NLRB Region 32, on February 16, 2026. The cover letter and attached exhibits are linked below.
Apple Fab Toxic Cover-up In Santa Clara Exposed At Press Conf-Apple Security Say They Work For 49ers
https://youtu.be/TeHOyevjtuw
Apple has been illegally operating a highly toxic fabricating plant in a residential neighborhood in Santa Clara
and has retaliated against a whistleblower Ashley M. Gjøvik who was sickened as a result of her office being
on top of a toxic dump site and living in a apartment next to the Apple fab plant in Santa Clara. The residents
and workers have been kept in the dark about the serious toxic releases and the illegal criminal activity of
Apple to cover up the operation and retaliate against Apple whistleblower Ashley M. Gjøvik. Speakers talked
about the danger to workers and communities and the failure of the government and all oversight agencies
to investigate and prosecute Apple executives and managers for running a criminal enterprise and conspiring
to violate Federal, State and Local laws protecting the environment, the residents and the workers.
Additional Media:
Apple Toxic Crimes, The Santa Clara FAB and The EPA With Fired Apple Whistleblower Ashley M. Gjøvik
https://youtu.be/0j8m9Fs2VjU
Apple's Secret Silicon Fab Next to Thousands of Homes
https://www.ashleygjovik.com/3250scott.html
Apple Whistleblower Ashley Gjøvik On Retaliation, Toxics & Corruption-Poisoning The People & Workers
https://youtu.be/9hj0HSkCnL0
The Union Busting War On Apple Workers & NLRB Ruling For Fired Apple Worker Ashley M. Gjøvik
https://youtu.be/ycxIbfO-pG0
US Labor Secretary Marty Walsh: Stop US DOL OSHA Whistleblower Corruption Now
https://www.change.org/p/marty-walsh-stop-us-dol-osha-whistleblower-corruption-now
http://justiceatapple.com/
Apple Toxic Is It Above The Law? With Whistleblower Ashley M. Gjøvik
https://youtu.be/cvxNLu7BhaI
Part II: My personal hellscape of conflicts of interest, obstruction, & arbitrary denials of due process continues…
https://ashleygjovik.substack.com/p/field-notes-on-regulatory-capture-c08
Apple Wanted Her Fired. It Settled on an Absurd Excuse
https://gizmodo.com/apple-wanted-her-fired-it-settled-on-an-absurd-excuse-1847868789
Apple Employee Blows Whistle on Illegal Spying and Toxic Working Conditions
https://truthout.org/articles/apple-employee-blows-whistle-on-illegal-spying-and-toxic-working-conditions/
Silicon Valley Chemical Contamination & Exposure
http://www.whatsintheair.org/silicon-valley.html
I thought I was dying: My apartment was built on toxic waste
https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-dying-my-apartment-was-built-on-toxic-waste/
WW 4-22-22 The Corporate Capture Of OSHA & The US Government Corruption Cover-up
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio/ww-4-22-22-the-corporate-capture-of-osha-the-us-government-corruption-cover-up
On Workers Memorial Day 2021 Former OSHA WPP Lawyer & Investigator Darrell Whitman Speaks Out!
https://youtu.be/9ZL9cSolNFw
OSHA Corruption, Cover-up & US Inspector Generals With OHSA Whistleblower & Lawyer Darrell Whitman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDPQpqmUq2k
OSHA Corruption, Cover-up & US Inspector Generals With OHSA Whistleblower & Lawyer Darrell Whitman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDPQpqmUq2k
OSHA, Corruption & The Capture of US Inspector Generals With Whistleblower Darrell Whitman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUVIu-Op8Wg&t=33s
The Office Of Special Counsel OSC, Corruption, Kerner & OSHA WPP Whistleblower Lawyer Whitman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCxYm65qwaI
Additional Links:
Big Tech Politics
https://ashleygjovik.substack.com
ashleygjovik.com
Production Of Labor Video Project
http://www.labormedia.net
Apple filed an emergency letter with a federal court demanding sanctions, contempt, a restraining order on my speech, and deletion of my blog post and social media posts about my NLRB charges. They wanted an unrecorded phone call within 24 hours to make it happen. No motions, no evidence, no briefing, no court reporter, and no public visibility to what happens. Apple wanted my coworkers to know Apple was getting me called into detention with a Judge, but they didn't want anyone to see what was said or understand what the outcome was, other than it was all happening because Apple called me a "leaker" when I complained about work conditions and demanded that Apple be a better employer.
Apple's lawyers even emailed me demanding I delete social media posts and blog posts that they wanted me to self-identify as "leaking" about work conditions. I told Apple's lawyers to eat rocks. Then they escalated to a federal court, accusing me of gross misconduct and saying I'm causing irreparable harm to Apple, and cited and quoted my NLRB charges against Apple alleging that Apple violated the NLRA.
Apple also repeatedly claimed that me complaining about Apple's intrusive requests, monitoring, questioning and "studies" of employee genital secretions was also Apple Confidential and suggested I was "breaching" court Orders (that's asking a court to hold me in contempt), and should be forced to delete my posts (that's sanctions/injunctive relief), and be ordered to stop "leaking" (that's a prior restraint gag order).
I, once again, told Apple's lawyers to eat rocks.
During this period of time Apple accumulated three new NLRB charges like it was collecting Pokémon cards.
....
Apple did manage to get a next-day cryptic, non-public, non-recorded, evidence-free "telephonic discovery conference" scheduled for Feb. 20 2026 where I was denied a request to have time to even file an Opposition, and my objections demanding evidence, proper motions and briefing, a Court Reporter and basic Due Process were all implicitly denied.
So basically recreating that Sept. 9 2021 email from Apple's Workplace Violence team demanding I get on the phone with their interrogator and then firing me for "non-cooperation" when I said I wanted a record of the conversation because I thought they were going to hurt me, which of course they were and having a record of them doing that makes it more difficult for them to do with the flare they so enjoy.
I filed three responses today across two federal courts: an Opposition and a Motion to Quash in the US District Court, and a Motion for Sanctions in the Bankruptcy Court for Apple's violation of the automatic stay. They're linked and attached below. There are copies of all of the new NLRB charges attached to the Opposition filing if you'd like to review this incredible progress we're making on documenting Apple's absolutely ridiculous behavior.
To that point, none of Apple's behavior is surprising. This is what old, crotchety Big Tech employers do when they're not used to employees organizing and pushing back. They clearly think they can get away with unfair labor practices and overt retaliation because they've always gotten away with it. Their entire playbook depends on employees being too scared or too broke to fight.
I also think Apple is flipping out right now because I managed to escape out of that dank submarine cesspool bunker in Boston I had been trapped in for a couple years. I was back in Santa Clara County for only two weeks catching up on many overdue filings and litigation deliverables. Apple's lawyers apparently had become complacent with me being mostly incapacitated, and so they apparently panicked to see me back in action. So they did... this?!
Listen, even if the court or NLRB won't intervene, even if every institution that's supposed to protect workers fails — this is how employees do it. You just keep pushing back. You hold the line. You expose the truth. You call them out. You might get slowed down by personal stuff here and there, but you bounce back. You tell them to eat rocks when they're union busting. You put it all on the record. You make them do their dirt in public. And you don't stop.
When they freak out like this, you file more charges. You document the freakout and you push harder. Someday they're going to have to budge and you swoop in and you get bargaining agreement signed immediately - do not release your pressure for one moment or they will squirm away like the little worms they are.
Apple's letter complained to the court that I was orchestrating a "campaign" to expose their suppression of worker complaints. Yes. That's what labor organizing is. Welcome to it, Apple.
APPLE CLAIMS IT OWNS ITS EMPLOYEES' CERVICAL
MUCUS: A NEW NLRB CHARGE REVEALS THE LOGICAL
ENDPOINT OF CORPORATE CONFIDENTIALITY ABUSE
https://www.ashleygjovik.com/blog/apple-claims-it-owns-its-employees-cervical-mucus-a-new-nlrb-charge-reveals-the-logical-endpoint-of-corporate-confidentiality-abuse
2/16/20260 Comments
On February 16, 2026, I filed a new unfair labor practice charge against Apple Inc. with NLRB. The charge contains ten counts alleging violations of Sections 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(4) of the National Labor Relations Act. The accompanying cover letter, complete with deposition transcript excerpts, paints a picture so extraordinary that it warrants serious attention from labor law practitioners, employment scholars, and anyone interested in the boundaries of corporate power over employees' bodies and speech.
The short version: Apple's lawyers designated an employee's deposition testimony about my own cervical mucus, ovulation, and menstrual cycle as Apple's confidential business information, then told me that if I disagreed, I could write Apple a memorandum explaining why my bodily secretions don't belong to the company. The long version is even worse.
Background: The Settlement That Should Have Ended This
My earlier charges (Case 32-CA-284428 and related cases) resulted in a General Counsel complaint and a national settlement agreement reached in April 2025. That settlement required Apple to rescind overbroad confidentiality policies that restricted employees' Section 7 rights, post a nationwide notice promising not to discipline employees for discussing working conditions, and agree not to enforce its definition of "Proprietary Information" to the extent it covered terms and conditions of employment. The settlement included a catch-all: Apple promised not to "in any like or related manner interfere with your rights under Section 7."
Critically, the settlement contained a self-executing default provision. Upon non-compliance, the Regional Director would reissue the October 2024 complaint, Apple's allegations would be deemed admitted, its answer withdrawn, and the Board could enter a full remedy order without trial. A Court of Appeals judgment could be entered ex parte. That provision matters for everything that follows.
.....
The December 16, 2025 Deposition
I was deposed in my federal retaliation lawsuit against Apple on December 16, 2025. The deposition was taken by Apple's counsel (a senior partner at a major firm). What happened during that deposition, as documented in the charge's cover letter and attached transcript excerpts, forms the factual core of the new charge. Apple's counsel questioned me about Apple's misconduct and discipline policy — the same type of policy that was the subject of the prior NLRB settlement. When asked whether I understood that violating confidentiality obligations could warrant immediate termination, I responded that I didn't understand the policy's terms, that they were overbroad, and that "NLRB said those terms were unlawful and that Apple could no longer enforce them and had to withdraw them from their policies."
Apple's counsel responded by immediately designating the entire remainder of the deposition as "Confidential" pursuant to the civil litigation's protective order. The exchange, as quoted in the charge, is striking. When I objected that the designation was premature, Apple's counsel didn't know what I would say next and couldn't pre-designate unknown testimony; then Apple's counsel asserted the procedural right to pre-designate under the protective order and told me to use the order's challenge procedures if I disagreed. When I protested that Apple was "misusing confidentiality terms" to "hide protected statements" immediately after I invoked the NLRA, Apple's counsel called a break, then designated pages 66 through 305 (of a 336-page transcript) as confidential. Approximately 72% of the deposition was designated as confidential.
Seven Weeks of Silence
The blanket designation remained in effect for seven weeks — 50 days!!! — until February 4, 2026. During that period, I was supposedly unable to discuss the substance of my own testimony, including my descriptions of protected concerted activity and my invocation of NLRA rights, with coworkers, the public, or the NLRB.
When Apple finally narrowed its designations, approximately 99% of the previously designated material was conceded to be non-confidential. This is legally significant because the protective order itself prohibited "mass, indiscriminate, or routinized designations" and required that designations be limited to "specific material that qualifies under appropriate standards." A blanket designation covering 72% of a deposition, maintained for 50 days, where 99% is ultimately conceded to be non-confidential, appears to violate the very order Apple invoked to justify the designation.
What Apple Claims to Own
When the narrowed designations finally arrived on February 4, 2026, they came on an unsigned, undated six-page PDF that Apple refused to email to me directly, refused to sign, and refused to date. Apple emailed it to the court reporter and said it was for my "awareness." The final designation list contained over 140 terms. Some were facially absurd — the letter "N," the word "hardware," and generic engineering development phrases. But the designations that matter most for NLRA purposes are the ones Apple applied to the substance of my protected concerted activity.
The charge quotes three deposition excerpts where I testified about my complaints to my supervisor regarding Apple's invasive workplace studies. In these excerpts, I described:
An ovulation study where Apple asked female employees to measure their cervical mucus
A bed-sensor study that monitored vitals during sleep and required any sexual partner or co-sleeper to register with Apple and sign an NDA
An ear scanning study that I declined, describing the physical discomfort and my objection to Apple maintaining a library of employees' ear images
This testimony (an employee describing my complaints about workplace conditions to my supervisor and to coworkers) is textbook protected concerted activity under Section 7. I was testifying about raising concerns on behalf of myself and my coworkers about invasive employer practices directed at their bodies. Apple's active confidentiality designations, as documented in the charge, include: "ovulation study or they were asking females to measure our cervical mucus," "ovulation," "measuring female employees' cervical mucus," "my cervical mucus," and "mucus -- the cervical mucus secretion."
Each of these was individually designated across multiple separate deposition excerpts. This was not a single overbroad designation that inadvertently swept in bodily terminology. Someone at Apple's law firm reviewed the transcript, identified each instance where I described what Apple asked my body to do, and separately flagged it as Apple Confidential.
As I state in the charge: "Apple does not own my vagina, has no legitimate interest in who I have sex with, and its outrageous Apple would even imply it could make these claims."
The April 2025 settlement included several specific commitments that appear to be directly contradicted by Apple's deposition conduct:
The revised IPA preserves the right to "discuss or disclose information about Your or others' wages, hours, or working conditions." Apple designated testimony about working conditions as confidential.
The notice posting promises Apple will not "advise you that you are subject to discipline for violating overly broad rules regarding confidential or proprietary information." Apple's counsel asked under oath whether discussing working conditions was "a breach of your confidentiality obligations."
Apple agreed not to enforce its definition of "Proprietary Information" to cover terms and conditions of employment. Apple's confidentiality designations enforce that definition through the protective order mechanism.
Violation of a Board settlement resolving 8(a)(1) charges is itself an independent 8(a)(1) violation. And the default provision means the remedy upon non-compliance is potentially automatic: deemed admissions, no trial, and ex parte Court of Appeals enforcement.
The "Whitelisting" of Section 7 Rights
Perhaps the most doctrinally significant allegation concerns Apple's counsel's repeated questioning about whether one of my coworkers was "whitelisted" to receive information about working conditions. The deposition excerpts in the charge show Apple's counsel asking whether I was "permitted" to share information with a coworker, whether the coworker was "whitelisted," and — when I stated I didn't understand the question — spelling out: "How about allowed? A-L-L-O-W-E-D?"
This line of questioning establishes a framework where the right to discuss working conditions is conditioned on employer authorization. Under Section 7, that right is unconditional. An employee does not need to be "permitted" or "allowed" or "whitelisted" to discuss wages, hours, or working conditions with a coworker. The right is statutory.
The charge argues that Apple's questioning creates a work rule permitting discussion of employer misconduct only among its victims (those who were also "whitelisted" for the same surveillance) and treating discussion with any other coworker as a confidentiality breach. This is a per se violation of Section 8(a)(1). The Board has consistently held that employer rules conditioning Section 7 activity on prior authorization are unlawful.
24/7 Surveillance from Personal Devices
The charge also alleges that Apple placed my cell phone and iCloud account on a "whitelist" (a different use of the same term) that caused continuous, 24/7 capture and automatic upload of photographs, video, audio recordings, biometric data, and GPS location whenever the camera detected a face — inside and outside the workplace, including in my home and including images in states of undress.
Under National Steel & Shipbuilding Co., 324 NLRB 499 (1997), and Aladdin Gaming, LLC, 345 NLRB 585 (2005), employer surveillance that would reasonably tend to coerce employees in the exercise of Section 7 rights violates Section 8(a)(1). The standard is objective: the question is whether the surveillance would chill a reasonable employee, not whether the employer intended to suppress union activity. The charge notes that the surveillance captured communications with coworkers about working conditions, communications with the NLRB, communications with journalists, and organizing discussions.
This would represent an unprecedented scope of employer surveillance in Board case law — continuous audio, video, biometric, and location capture from a personal device, 24/7, extending into the employee's home.
Garmon Preemption and the Forum Problem
Count 10 of the charge raises a preemption argument that, whatever its outcome, illustrates the institutional trap the case has created. Under San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U.S. 236 (1959), when activity is arguably subject to Section 7 or Section 8, federal courts must defer to the Board's exclusive competence. Under Lodge 76, IAM v. WERC, 427 U.S. 132 (1976), preemptive jurisdiction extends to conduct Congress intended to leave unregulated as well as conduct it intended to regulate.
The charge argues that Apple's insistence that my "only option" is to challenge the confidentiality designations through the federal court (via memoranda to Apple and escalation to the Magistrate Judge) constitutes a prohibition on filing NLRB charges and an assertion that the protective order stripped the Board of jurisdiction. If the Board agrees, the federal court lacks jurisdiction over these NLRA questions. If the Board disagrees or declines to act, it is effectively ceding jurisdiction over claims expressly about NLRA charges, protected concerted activity, and Board proceedings to a court that (as documented in the same charge) coerced the employee into stipulating to the very protective order at issue while the employer's counsel discussed the foreseeable possibility of driving the employee to suicide.
The Institutional Dynamics
The charge does not exist in a vacuum. As I noted, I previously filed a charge alleging Apple violated the April 2025 settlement through its litigation conduct in the same federal case. The Region and Compliance Office declined to investigate or take action, and refused to state findings in writing. This occurred, the charge notes, after Apple's own former defense counsel was appointed as the new NLRB General Counsel. The charge argues that the Region's prior refusal to act emboldened Apple, and that Apple's conduct has escalated since the first reported violation went unenforced. The charge presents this as a pattern: each time the Board declines to enforce its own settlement, Apple pushes further.
This creates an institutional dilemma that the charge's structure appears designed to exploit. If the Board declines to act on this charge, it will have reviewed a filing documenting Apple designating employees' cervical mucus as confidential business information, interrogating a former employee about whether discussing working conditions with coworkers was a policy violation, and maintaining a 50-day blanket gag order on protected activity that was 99% unjustified (all in violation of a settlement the Board itself brokered) and decided that none of this warranted investigation.
What makes this charge notable beyond its individual allegations is its structural design. The charge is simultaneously:
An NLRB filing that creates a federal agency record of Apple's conduct;
A vehicle for public disclosure of the specific terms and testimony Apple designated as confidential because its absurd and clearly illegal;
A court docket filing via the notice of pendency, placing the material before the judge who controls the protective order;
A settlement enforcement mechanism that may trigger automatic default remedies;
A documented dare — paragraph 48 expressly states that if Apple seeks sanctions for the disclosures in the charge, another charge will be filed.
Each function reinforces the others. The NLRB filing is protected activity under Section 8(a)(4), making any Apple retaliation for the filing itself a new violation. The public disclosure through the NLRB filing renders the confidentiality designations functionally moot for the disclosed terms. The court docket filing puts the judge on notice of the parallel Board proceeding and the Garmon preemption issue. And the settlement enforcement argument converts each documented violation into a potential trigger for the automatic default provision.
The Limits of Confidentiality as a Weapon
This case, if credited, represents something genuinely new in NLRB practice: an employer using a civil litigation protective order (one the employer selected, insisted upon, and applied) to reimpose the substance of confidentiality policies the employer agreed to rescind in a Board settlement. It is, in effect, an end-run around the settlement through a different procedural mechanism, using the deference courts give to confidentiality designations in discovery to achieve what the NLRA prohibits.
The specific content of Apple's designations makes this more than a procedural dispute. When an employer claims that an employee's testimony about my own cervical mucus is the employer's confidential business information — repeatedly, deliberately, across multiple transcript excerpts — it has moved past any recognizable assertion of trade secret protection into something that more closely resembles a claim of ownership over the employee's body and the employee's right to describe what was done to it.
The National Labor Relations Act was enacted to protect employees' right to discuss their working conditions. When those working conditions include employer-directed monitoring of female employees' reproductive biology, the right to discuss those conditions necessarily includes the right to use the words that describe them. Ovulation. Cervical mucus. Menstruation. These are not engineering specifications or product roadmaps. An employee's right to protest those practices to coworkers, to the NLRB, to the public — cannot be extinguished by placing those words on an unsigned PDF and calling them proprietary.
Whether the current Board will act on this charge is an open question. What is not an open question is that the charge and its supporting materials are now part of the public record — on the NLRB's docket, on the federal court's docket, and in the hands of anyone who cares to read them. The file will outlast every person currently sitting in a position to act on it or ignore it. And the default provision, loaded and waiting, does not expire with any particular General Counsel's term.
Apple's lawyers may have had the procedural right to designate deposition testimony as confidential. What they did not have was the right to designate protected concerted activity as confidential, the right to condition Section 7 activity on employer authorization, or the right to claim ownership over an employee's bodily secretions. The transcript documents them doing all three, on the record, while the court reporter typed.
The charge was filed with NLRB Region 32, on February 16, 2026. The cover letter and attached exhibits are linked below.
Apple Fab Toxic Cover-up In Santa Clara Exposed At Press Conf-Apple Security Say They Work For 49ers
https://youtu.be/TeHOyevjtuw
Apple has been illegally operating a highly toxic fabricating plant in a residential neighborhood in Santa Clara
and has retaliated against a whistleblower Ashley M. Gjøvik who was sickened as a result of her office being
on top of a toxic dump site and living in a apartment next to the Apple fab plant in Santa Clara. The residents
and workers have been kept in the dark about the serious toxic releases and the illegal criminal activity of
Apple to cover up the operation and retaliate against Apple whistleblower Ashley M. Gjøvik. Speakers talked
about the danger to workers and communities and the failure of the government and all oversight agencies
to investigate and prosecute Apple executives and managers for running a criminal enterprise and conspiring
to violate Federal, State and Local laws protecting the environment, the residents and the workers.
Additional Media:
Apple Toxic Crimes, The Santa Clara FAB and The EPA With Fired Apple Whistleblower Ashley M. Gjøvik
https://youtu.be/0j8m9Fs2VjU
Apple's Secret Silicon Fab Next to Thousands of Homes
https://www.ashleygjovik.com/3250scott.html
Apple Whistleblower Ashley Gjøvik On Retaliation, Toxics & Corruption-Poisoning The People & Workers
https://youtu.be/9hj0HSkCnL0
The Union Busting War On Apple Workers & NLRB Ruling For Fired Apple Worker Ashley M. Gjøvik
https://youtu.be/ycxIbfO-pG0
US Labor Secretary Marty Walsh: Stop US DOL OSHA Whistleblower Corruption Now
https://www.change.org/p/marty-walsh-stop-us-dol-osha-whistleblower-corruption-now
http://justiceatapple.com/
Apple Toxic Is It Above The Law? With Whistleblower Ashley M. Gjøvik
https://youtu.be/cvxNLu7BhaI
Part II: My personal hellscape of conflicts of interest, obstruction, & arbitrary denials of due process continues…
https://ashleygjovik.substack.com/p/field-notes-on-regulatory-capture-c08
Apple Wanted Her Fired. It Settled on an Absurd Excuse
https://gizmodo.com/apple-wanted-her-fired-it-settled-on-an-absurd-excuse-1847868789
Apple Employee Blows Whistle on Illegal Spying and Toxic Working Conditions
https://truthout.org/articles/apple-employee-blows-whistle-on-illegal-spying-and-toxic-working-conditions/
Silicon Valley Chemical Contamination & Exposure
http://www.whatsintheair.org/silicon-valley.html
I thought I was dying: My apartment was built on toxic waste
https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-dying-my-apartment-was-built-on-toxic-waste/
WW 4-22-22 The Corporate Capture Of OSHA & The US Government Corruption Cover-up
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio/ww-4-22-22-the-corporate-capture-of-osha-the-us-government-corruption-cover-up
On Workers Memorial Day 2021 Former OSHA WPP Lawyer & Investigator Darrell Whitman Speaks Out!
https://youtu.be/9ZL9cSolNFw
OSHA Corruption, Cover-up & US Inspector Generals With OHSA Whistleblower & Lawyer Darrell Whitman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDPQpqmUq2k
OSHA Corruption, Cover-up & US Inspector Generals With OHSA Whistleblower & Lawyer Darrell Whitman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDPQpqmUq2k
OSHA, Corruption & The Capture of US Inspector Generals With Whistleblower Darrell Whitman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUVIu-Op8Wg&t=33s
The Office Of Special Counsel OSC, Corruption, Kerner & OSHA WPP Whistleblower Lawyer Whitman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCxYm65qwaI
Additional Links:
Big Tech Politics
https://ashleygjovik.substack.com
ashleygjovik.com
Production Of Labor Video Project
http://www.labormedia.net
For more information:
https://www.ashleygjovik.com/blog/apple-wa...
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