Apple Retail Employees Get Pay Raise

On Thursday, computer giant Apple

announced that it has decided to reward its retail employees with a raise of up to 25 percent. Currently, Apple Store employees are paid between $9 and $15 an hour at the sales level and up to $30 an hour for members of the "Genius" support team. While companies are often criticized for not passing their massive earnings down to the people on the ground floor, Apple is attempting to reverse the trend. The employees are reported to be grateful for the raise, but there is a feeling that it has been a long time coming and that the increased wages will do little more than reflect the company's standing as a high-end retailer. The company currently employs approximately 36,000 full-time staffers in over 350 stores around the world. Two-thirds of those stores are in the U.S. Employees apparently learned of the raises, which will be performance-based, at review meetings with managers last week. They will start receiving the increased wages in mid-July. It is only two months since Apple appointed John Browett to Retail Chief, and he wasted no time in telling employees that their performance reviews would be brought forward three months from September. Data gathered from those reviews showed very clearly that Apple's staff was dissatisfied with the current wage level, with much of the frustration coming from the higher-paid "Genius" workers. Browett hopes that these pay raises will bring peace within the stores. The news comes on the same day that Apple revealed plans to step up its assault on Google

through Siri, the voice-activated iPhone personal assistant within the new iOS6 mobile operating system. Yelp

, plus a number of consumer media companies including movie review site

, have stepped up to help power Siri. Apple may be giving up on competing with Google on keyword searches, instead choosing to focus on popular searches for restaurants, movies, sports, business listings and maps, among others. On Thursday morning, Apple is traded at about $586.50, up roughly 0.1%.