From reposado's POV, the Apple catalogs are not a branch -- they are the trunk.
You could do what you want like so:
repoutil --new-branch Apple
repoutil --add-products non-deprecated Apple
repoutil --copy-branch Apple Employee
repoutil --copy-branch Apple Lab
repoutil --delete-branch Apple
or possibly:
repoutil --add-product non-deprecated Employee
repoutil --remove-product deprecated Employee
repoutil --add-product non-deprecated Lab
repoutil --remove-product deprecated Lab
I've not tested either of these; you might want to create new branches for testing to observe the actual behavior before proceeding.
-Greg