“X” Didn’t Pay Severance. Now It’s Facing 2,200 Cases—and Big Fees
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.
What's that come out to, around? 4 weeks pay per employee?
Well, minimum 2 months per employee plus the 4 weeks. Let’s figure an average salary of $80k. 6000 employees with an average tenure of 4 years. Let’s go ahead and round that to 3 months salary. So he’s paying the equivalent of 1500 employee’s average salary. That works out to about $120m.
I think my salary estimate is low there, and I have no idea what the tenure of the employees would be. Either way, not a small sum for a company that’s barely treading water.
I am gyessing that engineers at Twitter were probably making around $150k per year, give or take.
I would guess 150-250k. Twitter was known for lower pay (and a lower pace) than the big names, but it's still the bay area.
That's probably more accurate.
$80k/year*.25year*2200 = $44m in this case, though like you said your salary estimate is probably low
I could be mistaken, but I think the severance was three months when he bought the company.
So 12 weeks? That's a big chunk of change. Not much to him, though.
Yeah, you'd think so. But apparently it is since he hasn't paid anyone.
Yeah this mofo is sitting on mountains of cash and like Trump, he just doesn't pay his bills.
Literally the post:
That didn't answer the question
Considering that number isn't the amount of severance pay, it kinda did.
They were asking about the severance pay though? Did you reply to the wrong comment?
The way the comments read, they were asking if the amount that was given ($3.5mm) was for severance. I am pointing out that it is not, that it's for fees only.
That's the penalties, not the amount owed to the employees.
Exactly.