I hope all these folks get their severance, and hopefully with interest, legal fees and penalties.
If you are wilfully withholding pay then it should be mandatory jail time.
Legislation is underway here in Australia for such an approach after 7/11 et al systemically withheld pay knowing that the financial consequences weren't going to personally affect them.
No one's suggesting such.
We have plenty of disputed behavior and harms that are within the purview of civil courts, and then more egregious versions that are crimes. IMO, withholding significant pay that you have the ability to pay and is unambiguously contractually owed causes pretty serious harm, and society has strong reasons to criminalize this conduct.
Accepting services from someone while having no intent to honor the contract, hoping that disproportionate resources will prevent them from enforcing the contract "feels" like fraud: so let's codify it.
I would disagree.
We shouldn't allow criminal behaviour to be tolerated just because it's white collar.
And the whole point of laws is to protect the vulnerable in our society which definitely includes the innocent employees who are being harmed for doing nothing other than working for Twitter/X.
Well, they have to lose the cases before people can start enforcing judgements.
Our culture is joke, bleating about how free we are. Some freedom from a mathematical minority would be nice.
We need term limits on all forms of social influence.
My family used to be in food processing. The grocers (except Walmart, which is one of the reasons they can get lower prices), will straight up just not pay by the date specified in the contract and will make you hound them.
So there’s already legislation that enforces contracts. I’m not sure how you would make a law that was helpful to force prompt payment clauses specifically.
It’s important to only accept terms that you want. And if your customers keep paying late, then collect your penalty charges and negotiate for higher penalties next time.
Most vendors will pay on the absolute last day possible so if the terms are net30, they will pay on the 30th day.
Taking the Twitter case, a lot of these folks were laid off nearly a year ago. Why is this still going on? Is there anything that could be more cut-and-dry: they were promised severance, in writing, in their termination agreements, and they haven't received it. As far as I'm aware there are 0 facts that are actually in dispute (save some of the highest up execs that were basically fraudulently fired "for cause", but that's a different story).
If Twitter wants to continue not paying them, they should have to file for bankruptcy, otherwise the laid off workers should get to take it straight from the Twitter bank accounts at this point.
Now if the gov told Google they could receive a massive fine for paying late, they would stop doing it.
I wonder what percentage the legal team will take. I doubt this is happening pro bono.
It is a serious amount of work to take people to work, requiring years of education and a ton of skill. Particularly when the opposition has pockets as deep as X/Twitter/Musk.
Hopefully there are large damages that go to those who have been wronged in addition to restitution and repayment of the legal fees
I can not understand why some body like Musk who has such as easy ability to do the right thing would instead choose a far loser costly and damaging right. It's absolutely idiotic, absolutely damaging to the word as a whole, and fuck Musk. Only the worst sort of shit bag steals money at this level. If somebody steals baby formula out of desperation, they will feel far more drastic legal consequences than Musk will.
What real consequences could the officers of the company actually face that would encourage them to behave like adults?
If you wanna get away with a crime, do it in a company.
Might have been a CrimethInc. cell, I don't recall.
You will find it very hard to reach C-suite level at any publicly company where you cost your shareholders that way. And since it would constitute a violation of fiduciary duty, executives would be able to defend themselves when they take action to avoid that happening.
Of course there must be a legal case, and enough money can buy some great attorneys, but there are laws that enable payroll disputes to pierce the corporate veil.
Does anyone know why negative Twitter/X stories tend to drop off the front page so quickly.
It is now ranked 65 despite having a lot of votes in such a short time period.
Just wondering if it's because it is heavily flagged or if the mods are intervening like they have in the past ?
I think they'll get everything they want. All they need to do is enter discovery and he'll have to fold.
I also haven't heard any updates.
The amount is negligible to the world’s richest man. He just violated it because he could.
http://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/elon-musk-...
But we don’t make those anymore. Haven’t for a while. If we didn’t already have email, I doubt we could create it (and have it take off) today.
Hell we've pretty much 'uncreated' email over the past decade. How many people do you know who don't get their email via Google or Microsoft? I used to work for a very large university. Back when I was there, there was a team of Unix greybeards hosting all of the Universities email off of a bunch of Solaris boxes. It worked pretty flawlessly, end when it didn't they knew how to fix it. Today it's all been handed over to Microsoft and when something doesn't work, the help desk can just shrug and say "nothing we can do, it's Microsoft"
Running your own email server in any practical meaning is more or less impossible.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-spacex-secre...
Nice.
By the time they win, will “X” even exist in its current corporate form? Or will it have gone bankrupt, only to have its assets purchased, leaving the employees standing in line with all the other creditors.
Indeed, I wonder whether Elon Musk structured the deal with a heavy layer of debt precisely so that the firm could be taken through Chapter 11 and reorganized under a fresh cap table. It wouldn’t be the first time in corporate history that a leveraged buyout resulted in existing stakeholders getting screwed over.
However, in the event that it did, the US has a waterfall payment structure. Secured creditors get paid first, then lawyers, then employee wages and taxes, then unsecured creditors, then shareholders.
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/...
> X agreed to pay severance in employees' initial offer letters and later confirmed workers would receive severance at least as favorable during the post-merger period as they had under the old management. The severance plan entitled laid-off workers to at least two months of base salary, pro-rated performance bonuses as though all triggers for such bonuses had been hit, the cash value of any restricted stock units that would have vested within three months of separation, and a cash contribution for the continuation of health care coverage. Instead, the company paid two months of base salary to comply with the notice requirements of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, plus one month of severance pay, according to court documents.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severance_package
But Musk did publicly promise severance, then didn’t deliver. That would almost certainly be breach of contract.
And also given that Twitter universally refused to pay severance in all markets, including those with mandatory severance, I suspect Twitter’s decision isn’t coming from a legally sound place.
> In October, shortly after taking Twitter’s reins, Musk laid off more than half of its employees, promising most at least two months’ salary plus a week’s pay for every year they’d worked at the firm.
Key word here is the severance was promised to “most”, not “all” employees. Was that how it went down? I dunno, the article doesn’t say. Now you’re saying that no one was paid severance (“universally refused to pay severance in all markets”). Seems like there’s a lot of uncertainty here.
>38. Section 6.9 of the Merger Agreement provided that for one year following the closing of the merger, Twitter would continue to provide Plan participants with “Severance payments and benefits . . . no less favorable than” those provided under Twitter’s policies immediately prior to the merger.
> 39. The same day the Merger Agreement was announced, Twitter’s then-CEO, Parag Agrawal and its then-Chairman Bret Taylor met with all Twitter employees and informed them that Twitter would continue to provide the severance Plan benefits for at least one year following the change in company ownership.
>42. The Acquisition FAQs relied on the Merger Agreement and stated that “[t]he terms of the agreement specifically protect Tweep [Twitter employees] benefits, base salary, and bonus plans (short/long term incentive plans) so they cannot be negatively impacted for at least one year from the closing date.” The FAQ specifically stated that, “[i]n the event of a layoff, any employee whose job is impacted would be eligible for severance.”
That final sentence in 42 is pretty solid.
[0] https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/McMillian-v.-...
We don't know what went down. Musk could have actually paid 50.1% (or greater) employees severance. It doesn't matter, because in the U.S. you can sue anyone else for anything, illegal or not. I can sue you because your username sucks, for example. Oh and if you don't show up, I win a default judgement, so there is that.
Detrimental reliance/promissory estoppel.
If an employee continues to work under a contract, relying upon a promise that is later broken...
Unless you want future options with the person you are suing. Unless you need a reference. If you can afford it and if you are prepared to burn bridges.
(1) In some jurisdictions, some amount of severance is legally required in some circumstances, but the count at issue here is all in US jurisdictions where I don’t think that applies (to severance narrowly; there’s been some conflation of pay during a no-duty employment period that was used to comply with state and/or federal WARN Act notice requirements as “severance”, and while full pay and benefits for that time is legally required, its not severance in the strict sense),
(2) In most US jurisdictions, there is no general legal mandate for severance, but severance that is embodied as a term in the employment contract or otherwise part of a legally binding commitment or promise is required, and these cases involve specific allegations of such contracted or otherwise bindingly-committed-to severance.
