Elon Musk COLLAPSES Over Employee Disaster In Stunning Severance Consequences

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Elon Musk COLLAPSES Over Employee Disaster In Stunning Severance Consequences

Key Points

Elon Musk reached a legal settlement to pay fired Twitter workers $500 million
6,000 workers were fired without proper severance after Musk's Twitter takeover
Twitter's 2019 severance plan promised two months base pay plus one week per year of service
Twitter only offered at most one month of severance, with many receiving no additional compensation
Musk sent an email demanding employees be "extremely hardcore" or accept severance
Many workers were encouraged to leave but didn't receive promised severance payments
The settlement amounts to approximately $83,333 per person if divided equally
Musk settled because a federal appellate court was about to hear the lawsuit
The settlement is likely less than what should have been paid originally
This case represents a pattern of wealthy individuals taking advantage of workers
Progressive policies exist as "ground rules" to prevent exploitation of workers
Historical examples like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire led to worker protections like OSHA
The same legal standards should apply to both wealthy and poor individuals
Justice requires fairness and laws that apply equally to everyone
Without legal systems, powerful people would avoid paying what they owe
This is part of an ongoing struggle for worker rights against corporate power
Many Americans mistakenly view billionaires as populist figures
The case highlights the need for continued advocacy for worker protection and fair treatment

Full Transcript

Language: en
Elon Musk's idiotic purchase of Twitter
and the idiotic way that he mismanaged
it and ran it into the ground afterward
continues to plague him on a financial
level the same way it does us on a
societal level. And so he just reached a
legal settlement where he is going to
have to pay the workers that he fired a
half a billion dollars. And I wish that
was a bigger percentage of his wealth
than it is. But at least it's something.
I suppose it's some justice for the
people who uh ran a foul of Elon Musk.
And it's a reminder of how how little he
actually cares about the people who work
at the various companies he buys up and
then ruins. So, he's going to have to
pay $500 million. This is the 6,000
different workers who were fired without
severance after he took over Twitter. Uh
their suit claimed that in a 2019
severance plan, most Twitter employees
would receive two months of base pay and
one week of pay for each full year they
were at the job. But Twitter only
offered at most one month of seventh pay
and many didn't receive any additional
compensation. And so this was it was
fairly clear that they were going to be
treated poorly by Elon Musk after he uh
took over. And then he sent an email
saying uh all of you have to be
extremely hardcore or accept severance.
Okay? If you're not willing to work
really hard, then get the hell out of
here. You should be willing to work as
hard as Elon Musk will for 2 to 3 weeks
before he gets bored and moves on to
some other project. Okay, that's the
level of commitment he expects. And so
he continually cajol them to work harder
and harder or whatever. Um and then a
lot of people ended up being uh forced
out as a result of this. And the issue
is that many of them were encouraged,
okay, if you don't want to work there
and lots of people didn't want to work
under Elon Musk. they knew what
direction the platform was going to go
in and their worst fantasies have all
come true or predictions. Um they were
told you'd get that severance, but he
didn't actually do it. Now, either there
was no oversight of it after these
people left or he was lying to them, but
either way, it's good that they're at
least getting some money. It's not a
ton. The way that it works out, if it
were divided equally, and I don't think
that it will be, it would be about
per person. um which is certainly a lot
of money I think for most people
compared to their salary. Uh some of
these people of course working in a big
tech company had been making quite a bit
more than that at this point I'm sure.
And uh the settlement dragged on and on.
I mean he's owned Twitter for a couple
years. Um he finally made the settlement
because a federal appellet court was
about to take up the lawsuit in about a
month and he didn't want that to happen
so he finally settled. Brett, what do
you think? Which means that this
settlement is less than he probably
should have paid.
Probably. Yeah. That's how it works.
Like he was scared that he was going to
lose more in his risk assessment, which
apparently he's supposed to be pretty
good at if you're sending rockets into
space with people in them. Uh was that
it was cheaper to do this. And like
this is this is what I'm concerned with,
what I'm afraid of as a progressive,
right? is progressive is just it's a
generally speaking as I understand it
and as I I characterize it is it's just
ground rules against taking advantage of
people before the the triangle shirt
waist fire there were no ground rules to
have people able to like leave a a a
manufacturing facility in the case of a
fire we added OSHA and we added worker
protections to create ground rules to
look out for people because why because
people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump
are going to be greedy, selfish pratts.
They're going to be those guys and
something needs to check them because
what he did is he fired a bunch of
people who deserved to have severance
and he did not give them severance. And
if we lived in the dream world for those
guys, they would never have to pay the
thing that they're supposed to pay to
anyone ever.
And what what progressives look at the
system and say is like, well, we should
apply the same rules to super rich
people as we do to super poor people.
And that makes sense. We justice is
fairness and justice, you know, put
your, you know, blindly write the laws
agnostic of who they apply to. Just make
them apply to everybody.
Um but yeah, he would he would do this
all the time if he could. He tries to.
And we need some kind of system in place
to make the powerful pay their fair
share. And I'm glad it happened.
It's frustrating, Brett.
You Everything you just said there I
obviously agree with. It's that's
exactly what we do here. Like how many
years do we have to continue to fight
for workers who get effed over by
billionaires and corporations to receive
at least a little bit of justice, a
little bit of respect, a little bit of
the return on the work that they do. And
tens of millions of Americans would be
like, "No, I think I think the
billionaires are the populists. I think
Trump and Musk are the populace
as proof. I'm defending like annoying
Silicon Valley people.
Yeah, you don't want to be with those
$2,000 a piece of Silicon Valley people
who got screwed. Like
you could have been one of those people
if you like those people. You chose not
to. That's how much you despise them and
hate their guts. And yet
I love many of them.
It's so frustating. And I wake up in
cold sweats being like, "Why did I do
that with my life sometimes?" But I
wouldn't be here with you, John. By the
way, let me just can I just do a little
10-second pity party in addition to the
meta thing of like we continually push
for actual populism and then every once
in a while people are just like I bet I
bet the billionaire is the populace.
Like um everything that we just said we
can do years and years and years and
nobody cares. If like Joe Rogan finishes
like a week-long analysis of how Camp of
the Saints is the best book ever and
then he says, "Hey, I think Musk screwed
those people over." It'll be like
headlines everywhere.
Yeah. It's like some jackass white
nationalist podcaster will be like maybe
someday the minimum wage should go up
and everyone's like
and that's like just linear algebra
versus calculus, right?
I know I know I'm not sayingations and
trends versus just
Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's
the new cycle like like a T-Rex.
It's visual accuties based on movement.
Okay, that was actually pretty good. I
like it. And look, we give credit to
Marjorie Green because it's unexpected.
So, I do understand it. I'm just

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