Apple Inc. agreed to pay US$29.9mil to employees at its stores who were forced to submit to security bag checks - off the clock - when they left work after or during their shifts.

Lawyers for the workers asked a federal judge on Friday to approve the settlement, which was reached after a protracted eight-year legal battle.

Apple Store employees filed the class-action lawsuit in 2013, claiming the company was violating California law by not paying them for the time it took to check their bags.

Apple claimed the bag searches were necessary to make sure workers were not hiding stolen electronic devices in their bags and argued in court that anyone who didn’t like the policy could choose not to bring bags to work.

The lawsuit only covered workers at California’s 52 Apple stores. The class includes 14,683 workers; each will get US$1,286 from the settlement, the lawyers said in the court filing.

In 2015, a judge granted Apple’s request to toss the lawsuit. But it was revived last year when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Apple was required to pay employees for the time they spent having their bags checked.

Apple declined to comment on the settlement. The company said in the agreement that it discontinued the check policy in December 2015.

The case is Frlekin v. Apple, 13-cv-03451, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

 - Bloomberg