Apple will pay $30.5 million to California employees who weren't paid while they had their bags searched at work, after a judge OK'd a settlement in the 9-year case

• Apple will pay $30.5 million to thousands of store workers to settle a lawsuit over unpaid wages.
• Workers said they lost out on wages while waiting for their bags to be searched for stolen goods at the end of each shift.

Apple will have to pay more than $30 million to thousands of hourly California employees, finally settling a class action lawsuit that said the tech giant didn't pay store workers for the time they spent having their bags searched for stolen Apple items during security checks.

Each of the more than 14,000 former and current Apple workers affected will get an average payment of $1,328, the largest settlement of a security search case in California's history, according to a report by Bloomberg Law.

A judge in California's Northern District court officially approved the settlement on Monday.

This massive payout comes after a years-long legal battle between California Apple store employees and their parent company. The case was initially filed in July 2013.

The lawsuit claimed that Apple violated California labor laws by failing to pay its store workers while they waited in line to get their bags checked on the way out of the store for meal breaks and at the end of their shifts. The suit alleged that the time spent waiting for security checks amounted to up to 1.5 hours of unpaid work each week for some employees, or approximately $1,500 per year.

Bag checks are a common practice in many retail stores with employees who have access to store inventory.

Apple could not be reached for comment by Insider, though the company no longer requires employees to clock out before their bags are searched, according to Bloomberg.

The settlement comes amid a wave of unionization efforts at Apple stores. In June, employees at an Apple store in Towson, Maryland, became the first Apple store to officially vote to unionize.