What happened to all the severance that Musk did not dole out?
On a related note, musk seems like an impossible guy to work for. He is super opinionated and does things on a whim over tweet, does not treat employees properly, over works them and there is proof that he doesn’t even give severance to fired employees. Why do people work for him, specifically Twitter? I can see he allure behind Tesla and spacex even though I heard similar stories from there
Sure, he occasionally does the wrong thing but you're missing the context for all the times he's right. Nobody gives him credit for putting his shoes on the correct feet or remembering to get dressed after showering rather than before.
Of course, doing stupid things is also the problem with being stupid; Occam’s Razor probably points more to stupidity than brilliance in this instance.
It seems unambiguous that it was possible for X to get away with doing this if they were slightly less aggressive about it - set a reasonable RTO timeline instead of demanding people show up immediately, not go on witch hunts by scanning slack messages, etc. But X's new owner loves drama and wants to feel powerful, so we get this.
On the other hand you could also argue that they did get away with it, because multiple years of legal battles with the NLRB don't really count as much of a loss unless they result in big enough penalties to actually hurt the people who made these decisions.
Yes, they could have not antagonized people, but that's not the problem. The problem is they fired workers for coordinating. In this case it was about RTO but it could have been about coordinating about anything, even a triviality. Workers have the right to coordinate, organize, and act together, formally or informally.
There is definitely a correlation between being psychopathic and CEO. I don't know if either is a direct result of the other or if it's a third quality, but the statistical correlation is certainly there and has been known for a while.
I'm not sure what your point is. It's important that reporting is accurate, and the judicial system has not even held a hearing on this yet, though you wouldn't know that by the title here.
God forbid people be expected to read the article's they comment on. In any case, moderation or OP edited the title from what is on cnbc. Finally, to answer your question - I trust the NLRB, and I distrust Elon Musk. The court of public opinion doesn't require me to sit around and wait for a proper verdict when I can put two and two together myself. If it's found that X is in the right? You can correct me then.
Would just like to add in an edit: why is this flagged? People need to relax a little.
HN is full of a lot of what I call "unnecessary pedanticism". It's not really worth worrying about as the article title was cut short because of title size limits. It was a reasonable take on what to do in that circumstance.
I’m confused at how it is that people actually think that an employer doesn’t have the ability to dictate to its employees where their working location will be. They did it in early 2020 when they sent us all home. You are not forced to work at the location they specify—your employment in the US is always at will, so just quit and find another gig that suits you.
If I have an agreement with my employer to work at location X, and they decide I have to start working at location Y, they have that right, but I also have the right not to quit and force them to fire me, so I can collect unemployment. Laternatively, my employer could offer a severance package so that we part ways on friendly terms.
This complaint has nothing to do with whether someone was told to work at x or x location anyway. The complaint is typical organizing/unionizing type stuff.
> The NLRB protects workers’ legal right to engage in “concerted activity,” which is when two or more coworkers band together to address workplace issues.
The girl allegedly tried to "organize" other workers on Slack by telling employees who were already planning to resign to "not quit but to get fired".
I think the challenge will be for the employee to try and show that workplace conditions vs, WFH are so much worse to warrant organizing mass subordination as a way to improve it.
> I think the challenge will be for the employee to try and show that workplace conditions vs, WFH are so much worse to warrant organizing mass subordination as a way to improve it.
No, it won't be/ First, because its the NLRB that needs to make its case, but more significantly because the legal protection against retaliation for workplace organizing doesn't depend at all on a determination as to whether the organizing was "warranted" by how bad the situation was:
29 USC Sec. 157: "Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 158(a)(3) of this title."
29 USC Sec. 158(a): "It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer-
(1) to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 157 of this title;"
Honestly if it's just the two messages they listed where she:
> Tweeted: “Don’t resign, let him fire you. You gain literally nothing out of resignation.”
> posted on Slack: “Don’t, be fired. Seriously.”
This just reads like someone giving advice to workers so they can get more $$. Without some more context this sounds like some hard spin by NRLB as if she was "organizing" workers against a "workplace issue". But I guess forcing a company to fire people is a expression of labour rights or something.
> But I guess forcing a company to fire people is a expression of labour rights or something.
It is, yes; being fired vs resigning has impacts on unemployment insurance, for starters. Mass firings could involve EEO-related lawsuits while they would be much harder to prove if the affected employees "resigned." And mass firings of a sufficient number could trigger the WARN act for affected employees.
Assuming the cause leading to the mass firing was just. Losing a WFH benefit for a highly paid but small segment of society really doesn’t arise to the level of an injustice being done.
Yeah that’s unconvincing to me of any real organizational effort. I also keep thinking in my head how showing up to an office wearing something other than pajamas by a 6 figure earner somehow constitutes a work environment worthy of a collective bargaining agreement in the first place.
My UAW belonging grandfather who worked standing up on an auto line for 5 decades would probably have been ecstatic to sit in a Herman Miller office chair and eat free snacks all day. He bargained for an extra dollar or two an hour, or a day off or two a month—that was what was important to him, not “the office buys a brand of oat milk that I don’t prefer” level of discomfort we see today.
> and force them to fire me, so I can collect unemployment
Good luck with that. If your employer directs you to show up at a location to work and you choose to not show up, you are intentionally subordinate and in all likelihood your employer will dispute your unemployment claim.
Considering that healthcare is tied to employment in the US, a job change is high friction. Relocating ones family and life are as well. When companies change a policy like WFH to RTO they're asking a lot. And often it's a stealth layoff to avoid regulations.
Yes/no. COBRA is indeed the law, so yes you will have the option to continue your health plan for awhile (how long can very but > 1 year), but it can be remarkably expensive to do so. Your now paying your portion, the employers portion, +2%. And you've just lost your source of income. For those of us with high paying jobs who have made good financial decisions, this is probably OK for a time. But an extended unemployment, or being in less good financial shape and it can be effectively unaffordable.
Stop paying COBRA, unless you have paid significantly into your deductible. You can immediately get an ACA plan on termination for, comparatively, pennies.
YMMV. When I was laid off earlier this year COBRA was only slightly more expensive than an equivalent marketplace plan. But agreed don't skip checking the marketplace!
Also be aware of the "COBRA gap". You have the option to (retroactively) opt into COBRA for 60-days, so depending on your situation it may make sense to do without insurance within the gap, and opt-in in the unlikely event something catastrophic happens before your new employers insurance kicks in.
One confounding factor in my case may have been that I was employed across the country from where I lived, so the COBRA coverage vs the state market were completely different markets.
Maybe only in this context for high paid tech jobs at big tech companies. But I doubt that this is possible on the salaries of most other jobs or locations outside big tech. The world outside this bubble is mostly different. Maybe highly paid finance jobs would be another exception
Getting an individual ACA plan is typically easier the less you make. You’ll typically be able to get a bronze plan for whatever you were paying for your share.
The ACÁ plans are largely trash such that you can easily end up paying more out of pocket than you would with a COBRA plan. Likewise, there are myriad issues with continuity of care when changing providers.
That’s absolutely untrue (unless you’ve paid significantly into your deductible, in which case COBRA may be the right way to go). Most HRA plans from your employer are virtually indistinguishable from what you can get on the exchange. While there can be continuity of care issues, every portal allows you to check that the plan your selecting covers critical doctors.
It’s further no different than any issue you’d face simply changing employers.
The clearest thing you learn working in healthcare is how poorly people understand the ACA.
By working in healthcare, do you mean actually healing the sick and injured or participating in the massively destructive sham that is the US health insurance industry? I find it’s the latter that larger defends the ACÁ because they profit from it at the expensive of other people’s misery.
No, I, like most Americans, just find it incredibly insulting to be lectured to about how “poorly [we] understand the ACA” after having spent untold hours dealing with all its nonsense, spending absurd amounts of money to be denied care, lied to and be given the run around by insurance companies, often during some of the most challenging moments in our lives. Likewise, I find it completely obnoxious when the same people describe themselves as working in “healthcare,” while directly profiting from the denial of it to others, often illegally, because they know the people they’re screwing don’t have the time and resources to fight back. Apologies for speaking so plainly, but if any of this is somehow surprising to you, you should wake up.
So did you actively oppose it back in 2009? Because I seem to recall pretty active support regarding the Affordable Care Act back then, with many on the left suggesting it was the panacea to address the US healthcare woes.
A lot of us warned what a disaster it was going to be but we were told to sit down and shut up.
If your employer made promises about work location and/or work hours, they can't just suddenly go back on those promises and demand that you immediately upend your entire life to comply. Even if your employment agreement said they are allowed to do that, it may not be legally enforceable.
What they can definitely do is say "anyone who can't show up to work in this office is getting laid off", and then perform a mass layoff in compliance with the law (N days advance notice and/or severance, etc).
Claiming that if you choose to dance to a puppeteer's tune no matter what kind of demands they make on short notice you have "effectively resigned" is not a healthy employee/employer relationship and any boss doing that should expect to get harassed by the NLRB.
This is all separate from the question of whether X retaliated against people for organizing, which is definitely an illegal thing to do.
Friend of mine is a PA, always wanted to move to Alaska. Found his dream job, signed offer, sold house, found school for kids, etc.
Phone call 48 hours prior to them moving. “The clinic has been sold to new owners and they are evaluating all finances and rescinding employment offers, including yours. They’ll give you 30 days to repay the relocation assistance”.
No, they gave him far more than that. Three months salary, closing costs for the house they’d bought in Alaska, and no relocation repayment.
That is an individual one on one decision to terminate employment, which is different from a company wide email telling dozens or hundreds of people that they have "effectively resigned".
But did they do that? Employer changed a policy, if people individually complied with the company policy they continued their employment. If they didn’t comply, they were insubordinate and were fired. That seems like a one on one decision to me.
How many company policies can you intentionally break and maintain employment, at any company, pretty much anywhere?
The word "ability" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. You might want to specify what is wrong with challenging this "ability", in the case at hand, or maybe generally.
The person wasn’t fired for refusing to work in a specific location, but organizing their coworkers against resigning in the face of various abuses and a de facto layoff. The latter is protected under US labor law while the former (depending on the circumstances or terms of their employment) is generally not.
That’s one way of looking at it. Another way is to say that we were promised thus-and-such and now you’re (the company) reneging on that promise. We’re not going to quit, because even though you have the right, we think you’re wrong to go back on your word, and we’re going to try to change your mind.
That's not what X did that's illegal. They illegally fired workers for coordinating. That, illegally, suppresses unionization by suppressing all forms of coordinated action. Workers have a right to collective action, and to organize.
Or you try to organize a collective response that maximizes your and your fellow employees’ power to influence the decision. That’s a legally protected response and is the entire point of the article.
Flag the entire site for enforcing a very short headline length limit, like it's 1978 and we're reading it on an 80 character teletype. Must be a LISP thing.
I can't stand the X name! Twitter was more than a name/product. What's the catch phrase for "tweet this" or "someone tweeted me that" in X? "X this" or "someone X'd me that"? so awkward!
*edit: came to comment on employee handling fiasco but got distracted with the name
*Second edit: Wrote "twit" instead of "tweet". Out of sight, out of mind I guess!
Who of course, went back to using the name Prince once his contract dispute was over, which meant he could be the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince.
I’d say it’s likely that it’ll go down in history as Twitter; traditionally really bad rebrands are reversed, and swiftly forgotten. For instance, did you know that the UK Royal Mail was called Consignia for about a year in the noughties?
I was aware that x.com was Elon's 1999 banking startup that merged into Paypal.
I thought he somehow still owned it and held onto it, but didn't know about this further tidbit of history:
> In July 2017, PayPal sold the domain X.com back to Musk.[17] In July 2023, X.com was repurposed to redirect to Twitter, following Musk's establishment of X Corp. to manage Twitter assets.
You think the name is so important, yet after a decade you wrote twit and twitted... When it's actually tweet and tweeted. Shows you how subjective it all is that after a decade at the top of mind people can still get it wrong.
If lots of people regularly make fun of your branding, then you have won the branding game. Your brand awareness cannot be higher, and you have joined the hallowed company of Micro$oft, Mickey D’s, Tarzhay, Whole Paycheck, and WhyCombinator.
I think there are still way more people forgetfully or even unknowingly calling it Twitter than there are people making fun of the name 'X'.
I still type 'twitter.com' in my browser multiple times a day. If I mention a tweet to someone, I'll say I saw it on Twitter. I have to make an effort to call it X and I don't feel like putting in the effort.
That’s what I meant. Twits, twats, and all of that stuff is part of the language now. X is so stupid you can’t make fun of it, really. Comparing Elon’s X obsession to thirteen year old boys is not funny because it’s self-evident. None of our X jokes will stick because they’re less surprising than reality.
I'm pretty sure you can. I was trying to find a set of icons that were all in exactly the same style and the paths were all the same size etc to save me having to hack the SVG manually! :)
return to work really should be reserved for things like disability e.g. you broke your leg and your job is a waiter so you literally can’t work until it is healed.
I would honestly love a cubicle. Not being sarcastic at all. It’s funny to think back on Office Space and Dilbert and the general pervasiveness of the idea that cubicles are soul crushing. Open plan offices are 10x worse and everybody does them
I have no idea. I used to read Texts From Last Night and people would say stuff like "Me and my boss are getting high." Or "I'm going to go nap for an hour in the bathroom sitting on the toilet. They pay me $100,000 annually. God, I love this job."
And, of course, there's the tale of the forgotten employee.
Well, its not really theoretical that "at-will" employment means that termination is allowed by default (good cause is not required), but there are still prohibited "bad causes" (race, sex, labor organizing, etc.)
Of course, the burden is on the complaining party to show the bad cause, its not simply a matter of assertion.
They can fire you for no reason. But if they give a reason, it best be a legal one.
Of course, they can fire you for "no reason" when there's evidence there was a non-legal reason, and still be held accountable for an improper dismissal.
You just gave an example of the "cleverness trap" to which the tech industry is especially susceptible. Good laws are written to avoid what could be called legal "hacks." If it looks like workers coordinating, it is. If it looks like they got fired for it, that's illegal.
That is just ridiculous. Even as an employee, I believe that the company should be allowed to fire whoever they want whenever they want without justification. The company is paying money, they should be allowed to stop paying that money whenever they want... Otherwise it's not really their money. I've been fired over things that were not my fault and I never complained.
The monetary system which creates anti-competitive tech monopolies which makes it hard for people to start companies and find jobs should be fixed yes but that is a separate issue.
Oh please as if that would even make it in front of a judge. There is no way to prove that. They can say you're not a culture fit or something. There is no way that can be enforced. There are thousands of pretexts that can be used to justify a lack of promotions.
Starbucks is fighting this battle right now, and there has been successful enforcement in the past. It's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't just decide your beaten from the get go.
Yup, here Starbucks is having to explain to Labor as to why foam floor mats for reducing fatigue are a trip hazard and must be removed if your store is attempting to unionize, but not otherwise…
One time when I was younger, I was fired the day after the office Xmas party because the boss became jealous after he saw my girlfriend. Why would I want to continue working for such person?
If you have valuable skills and they don't want you. Or they're a jerk or an idiot. It makes no sense to stay.
I think the real self esteem issue would be staying while not being valued. That's like staying in a relationship when your partner doesn't like you.
> the boss became jealous after he saw my girlfriend. Why would I want to continue working for such person
Disguisting. Why should people lose income over your bos's immaturity? You are allowing him to get away with contemptible behaviour. People in power must be held to account.
you have rights, people fought for them, and if he wants to get rid of your he should cough up compensation.
I pick my battles. I'm constantly trying to educate people about monetary policy injustice and I worked in crypto and try to push that in a better direction.
>I've been fired over things that were not my fault and I never complained.
This sounds like satire. I understand some people have a strong "no complaining" culture, but that's usually in reference to hardship/burdens. Those same people are also frequently famous for not putting up with mistreatment.
So basically you're saying you're a pushover, and other people should also be obligated to just shut up and accept any abuse that comes from their employers? Because...?
Because someday jongjong is totally going to be a billionaire, it just hasn’t happened quite yet, but when it does the law must be there to protect them.
Thanks, that's generous thinking. If I ever become a billionaire, I wouldn't concern myself with pinching pennies and would focus on creating incentives and rewards that support value creation.
I highly doubt I would ever need more than $10 to 15 million in wealth for myself. I feel greedy for even suggesting that I may keep so much. I would probably find a way to share anything above 15m through some incentive structure.
No, you should change companies or start your own. I agree though that the current system makes it artificially difficult and that really needs to change.
It's because of monetary policy creating uneven playing fields that favor monopolies and centralization. Companies have an unfair advantage and leverage over employees but it's not hampered by such regulations as discussed here.
These regulations just harm competent people for the benefit of incompetent people. Would a competent person need such laws when they have valuable skills?
I think that ought to be illegal and IMO, the punishment should be even higher. But it's a different matter from the right to fire anyone for any reason.
Given a fair environment, being fired can be an advantage to the employee.
Imagine working for a company for 10 years where the employer secretly hates your guts due to personal reasons and you are never promoted, never given a raise, etc... but they didn't fire you because they couldn't find a good reason and were concerned about legal repercussions. Isn't that horrible that you wasted 10 years and could have been earning 2x more at a different company?
On a related note, musk seems like an impossible guy to work for. He is super opinionated and does things on a whim over tweet, does not treat employees properly, over works them and there is proof that he doesn’t even give severance to fired employees. Why do people work for him, specifically Twitter? I can see he allure behind Tesla and spacex even though I heard similar stories from there