Musk screwing his workers over? Must be a day that ends in Y.
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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In U.S. law there are generally speaking, two types of bonuses.
Non-Discretionary - A.K.A any bonus that doesn't take into account discretion on part of management and higher. This is usually for bonuses that apply as an "incentive" and have requirements to achieve. Think sales targets for sales teams, on-call incentive structures, and more. This type of bonus is actually considered part of your wage.
Discretionary - A.K.A. any bonus that is paid at the discretion of company ownership. Notably these are bonuses that are not typically communicated in advance, and thus an employee wouldn't know to expect them. They might still expect them from "tradition", but if the only time you ever know about a holiday bonus is when it arrives, it's likely Discretionary. These bonuses aren't guaranteed by anyone - and an employer can indeed to choose not to pay these types of bonuses.
It seems that Twitter failed to pay a non-discretionary bonus and there's a large paper trail of incentives given to employees for this bonus. I really hope the DOL makes an example of them on this case.
From reading the article, I don't think that this is an accurate description of the situation.
I believe that Twitter employees have been getting a discretionary bonus, so normally Musk would have been fine simply not paying it out, but as part of the acquisition he promised that he/the company would pay it out as it had been in previous years, with some stipulations, etc.
So the issue now is that he promised he would pay it, which means that he's obligated to do it, because the employees made decisions based on that promise that cost/lost them money.
It seems like very simple promissory estoppel.
I'm confused - that's almost exactly what I said, albeit in a very condensed form.
Once you take a Discretionary bonus and then make it into an incentive (i.e. This year the Christmas bonus must be earned by doing X, Y, Z) and adding stipulations to the bonus that are tied to worker output turns it into a non-discretionary bonus.
Promissory Estoppel is the basis for why non-discretionary bonuses are a category. There is a perceived promise of a bonus that people work for, but then are denied which can cause knock-on effects for the people to whom that bonus is owed. A bonus is discretionary up until the point it's used to get people to work longer or perform better.
Sure the general term is Promissory Estoppel, but that's a much weaker regulatory framework than Pay and Labor laws around non-discretionary bonuses.
If there is something else I'm not understanding here please enlighten me further. If it's not "accurate" I invite you to help me be more accurate.
I hope they make an example out of Twitter too. Especially since other companies (ahem) are looking to Musk for ideas on how to run themselves.
Huffman looked at this clown and said "I want to be like him!"
Anyone who thinks he’d have a heart is delusional.
(This posted three times, my fault)
Tesla FSD is generally being regarded as a joke, Twitter is being flooded by dozens (or maybe even more) lawsuits for nonpayment - it seems like maybe Neuralink/SpaceX are his only businesses that aren't doomed at this point?
Oh, Neuralink is doomed as it's a dumb idea.
Who could have EVER seen this coming?!?!
My question is: Why? When he was just focused on spaceX and Tesla very few times I would hear about this behavior (I might just live under a rock). But now that he is focused on Twitter it's like he decided to be a piece of shit even more.
Has he invented self-driving cars? Has he put a man on Mars?
Are either of those companies any closer to achieving those hypebeast goals today than they were 5 years ago?
He's always been a clown, you were just really entertained by his balloons before.
Because he’s largely been removed from the day-to-day for those companies due to his ineptitude .
Twitter is his biggest public image failure and unlike being viewed positively like he once was for SpaceX/Tesla, he’s copped a lot of negative feedback from Twitter users and is lashing out in a tantrum.
That makes sense
It's been happening but on a lesser scale, last one I recall was this, but with Tesla he didn't have an active debt to pay off.
Twitter does
Twitter has three large pieces of debt with interest coming due: $6.5 billion that was meant to be sold to leveraged-loan investors, and $6 billion of bridge loans, split equally between a secured and unsecured tranche, that banks had planned to sell in the form of junk bonds.
The rumor I read was that he wants to be as poor at business as possible for the small things, so that when he has to refinance billions of dollars re: his loan w/ the banks, creditors will see how he's been operating as of late and are more likely to negotiate with him or reframe how much they think they can recoup.
So, stiff people for hundreds of thousands here and there in the hopes that you can shave a few billion off of the more important debt
Imagine thinking Musk is some 5d chess expert and not just a fucking dumbarse with too much money.
That doesn't make any sense. He's lost 10's of billions on Twitter. Nor do banks operate in that way This is just who he is.
Why would being an idiot incline the bank to lend at more favorable terms? If anything this kind of behavior is a red flag for lenders.