- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Elon Musk’s alleged penchant for not paying bills is catching up with him. In the wake of numerous lawsuits claiming the world’s richest man failed to pay severance owed to many of the 6,000 employees he fired after acquiring Twitter. On Monday, CNBC reported that the tech company now known as X is facing some 2,200 arbitration cases filed by ex-employees, which come with $3.5 million in required fees—an amount that doesn’t even include the actual severance owed to those Musk let go.
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. Thousands claim that they haven’t received a single dime, and ex-employees have since filed several lawsuits seeking their promised benefits.
So was the rebranding of Twitter to X just so Elon could say “U fuckin’ wot m8? This company is X, and your employment contract is with Twitter, so it looks like you were never employed here.”?
Fortunately that doesn’t work.
Even if Musk totally shut down Twitter, then opened an identical platform named X, the contracts Twitter held are still enforceable under the law.
There might be stipulations in the contracts where severance isn’t payable if the company fails, but if I remember correctly, this severance is something mandated by state law, and not just a contractual perk.
So bottom line, Musk is liable unless his lawyers are able to worm their way into a settlement.
Sure, but this is a guy who signed a contract forcing him to purchase Twitter and thought he could just say “I don’t want to anymore.”