https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/twitter-refuses-to-pay-for-arbitration-it-forced-on-891-ex-employees-suit-says/
Meanwhile, at least one Twitter ex-employee has won a rare settlement.
For people not reading the article, Twitter was facing a class action lawsuit, but they successfully sued to force employees to go through arbitration, which avoids a class action suit. Only problem is that arbitration rules say the employee has to pay a small fee for filing, but the company has to pay the arbitration costs. Twitter filed to force the costs to be split with the employee, but the organization that overseas arbitration said that's against their rules and has refused to engage in any arbitration activities that Twitter isn't paying for. The pricetag could be millions, and Twitter is simply not paying, so now the employees are suing to force Twitter to pay.
It is not legal for employees alleging sexual assault or harassment. Because Congress passed a law making that illegal. Also, it is not legal for baggage handlers, because the Supreme Court said there's an exemption for working in interstate commerce. IIRC Congress tried to ban it across the board last year, but it died in the Senate and then the House flipped so there won't be another chance for a few years at least.
I would be so embarassed if I ever was a fanboy of this fucking dunce
Imagine being capable of getting enough loans to buy a company for $44B and not being able to envision basic consequences for your buisness actions
I am loathe to admit I was a fan (though not really a boy about it) in the early days of Tesla and SpaceX. I don't even necessarily think I was wrong at the time, mind you — whether or not he deserved the credit for their achievements, his companies were pushing electric cars and rocketry in the right direction IMO — it's just sad to see that once the curtain was pulled back, there was nothing but a narcissistic and delusional huckster behind it all.
I would say that a lot of people (myself included) fall into this boat. We were fooled a decade+ ago, but the truth is clear now
Yeah I certified used to admire the progress his companies made, and admired him by relation. Wasn't a fanboy though. Sad to see what the real picture was.
I didnt fan over him, but I definitely respected some of "his" earlier ventures, especially SpaceX. Now I just laugh when I hear his name
I have the same sentiment, it wasn't necessarily the man I was a fan of, but I was happy to see someone using their wealth to build companies that can push humanity forward. Tesla turned out to be a dud in my opinion and SpaceX prospers seemingly despite Musk.
Based on what I've read about his time at PayPal, he's always been like this. Probably worse now, but never who I thought he was.
Hey, I'm not really blaming them (although his blue check dogs are something else), people are not immune to propaganda and advertising, and billionaires have PR agents for a reason
Well said. I'm sad to say I was in the same boat. I'm amazed he not only has people that like him, but superfans as well. Yikes!
I'll admit I was a minor fan of him. He seemed to have his ego pointed in a good direction. It was around the time those kids got stuck in a cave that I realised something was off.
I was never a hyper fan, but I'll admit I was completely taken in by his PR machine, for a time.
Oh man, you nailed the turning point. Literally everyone with eyes could look at the cross section map of the cave and immediately see that a rigid vessel was not going to get even half way through. And then the tweet calling the lead rescuer a paedo? I never liked the guy but that’s when I began to really dislike him. What an utter twat.
It's even more astonishing that the actual consequences are, almost nil.
He's simply not paying anyone. He's a massive fraudster and he's getting away with it. That's baffling. And sad.
Any normal business would have been completely disassembled by debt collectors, but that idiot somehow deflects every legal consequence.
The reason he's able to skip so much stuff, is what he skipped on first had escrow accounts to cover missed payments.
Those are pretty much all drained now, so consequences are coming since he was obligated to refund the escrows in x days/months. That's why it seems like he's "getting away with it" for so long.
He's not paying these because the other option is not paying his loans.
If he doesn't pay them, they force him to sell a bunch of Tesla stock, doing so would drop the price and it's already way lower than when he got the loans.
What’s an escrow account? Your comment is very clear and I understand the gist of it but I don’t actually know what escrow means.
Edit: stupid spelling mistake
Let's say you agree to rent my house
My house is baller tho, and the rent is 10k a week, for 520k a year.
So when we sign the lease, we agree that you pay 4 weeks into a bank account that youre not able to touch and I'm not able to touch either.
It's only there because if something happens and you don't pay me 10k each week, the account managers (escrow service) pays me 10k each week.
Once that happens, you're contractually obligated to pay the account (escrow) back within X amount of time. That way if you miss more payments, the buffer is replaced. But since the buffer exists, legally you haven't missed a payment until the fifth week you don't pay me.
Musk has been coasting on that buffer. Now that he's running out of buffer, legal consequences will start piling up.
I think he knew Twitter was a turd and wanted to use it as an excuse to dump Tesla stock without killing Tesla share value. The plan went awry when he couldn’t weasel out of the deal as planned and was forced to actually buy a company that was dead weight.
Pretty sure he took out loans using his Tesla stock as collateral, rather than dumping the stock outright.
He did both. He sold at least $3,000,000,000 in Tesla stock to help fund the twitter purchase.
We really are moving towards a Cyberpunk future, aren't we.
This is like one of the oldest sci-fi tropes to exist.
Dude is the richest person in the world. Penny pinching and denying his former employees their due when he rapidly raises his wealth is outright evil. Well, I guess there is a reason why no good human ever accumulates hundreds of billion dollars. If you are good, your conscience will force you to use your wealth to make other's lives better and you will lose your big B tag.
That's exactly how you get wealthy. Screw anyone you can, threaten them with eternal lawsuits, and you can get a huge discount on labour and other costs. Trump was famous for pulling the same shit.
Totally drinking the Gospel of Wealth Kool aid. You grind as much money as possible doing evil shit and then give a bunch of money away when you're old so people remember you well and you get to direct the world through philanthropy. Carnegie 101
It's not even just accumulating and giving that money away due to conscience. Nobody with a conscience could do what it takes to accumulated that large sum of wealth in the first place. You have to stomp on people and actively hurt the people around you.
It's like, he doesn't know whether or not it's going to work, so delays paying anybody (except obviously the lawyers) as long as possible. When it really doesn't work out, nobody gets paid. If it somewhat works out, he negotiates the payment down. Do you want it, or do you want more delay?
I'm a little surprised that Twitter can just refuse to come to the table without simply losing by default. But I suppose they wrote the terms of the arbitration agreement, so... not that surprised.
