FUBAR

Word inside Twitter is that A LOT of employees are not saying “yes” to staying at Musk’s “extremely hardcore Twitter 2.0.” He has been meeting today with engineers to convince them to stay. His deadline to decide to stay or leave expired 6 min ago. https://t.co/IErjQTMRE6

— Alex Heath (@alexeheath) November 17, 2022

Incidentally, a disabled employee is now suing Twitter over Musk’s ban on remote work.

Now seems like a good time to post these threads, if only so that quote makes sense.

Hearing from multiple employees that the odds of Twitter breaking in the near future are very high.

— Alex Heath (@alexeheath) November 17, 2022

Twitter employees can opt in to Musk’s “bend the knee” mandate to hold onto their jobs.
Then a small brave group could approach management and state that while everyone is willing to work hard and strive for excellence, they oppose the mandate of “long hours at high intensity.”

— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) November 17, 2022

If these concerted activity workers are fired in retaliation, they’re entitled to broad remedies.

These remedies have recently been expanded beyond front pay, back pay to include “new and alternative remedies.”

Thanks new NLRB counsel! ✊🏼 pic.twitter.com/2HrjeNIOyz

— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) November 17, 2022

Requiring an employer to publicly apologize for unlawful behavior has a special place in my heart, to restore dignity to workers who stand up. pic.twitter.com/8jeEXIPUTB

— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) November 17, 2022

That's thread 1; this is thread 2.

Let’s talk about the legal problems Elon just created for himself with this cruel new staff email.

You’re fired if you don’t commit to long hours at high intensity within 24 hours?

Let’s start with disabled workers. pic.twitter.com/SRrIz1iDlE

— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) November 16, 2022

Next, childcare still overwhelmingly disproportionately impacts female workers, for whom working long hours on a regular basis is often just a hard no.

So we have a gender discrimination issue too.#TwitterLayoffs

— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) November 16, 2022

Fourth, workers over 40 get 21-45 days to consider releasing claims, which would be part of that “severance” he’s talking about.

Not 24 hours.#TwitterLayoffs

— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) November 16, 2022

Update: Twitter HR is now telling everyone who does not sign the ridiculous new pledge they have resigned. Employment law does not work that way. You cannot deprive people of unemployment benefits and wrongful termination cases by saying that they resigned. Nice try though!

— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) November 17, 2022

Thread 2 especially is full of assumptions and hand-waving references to the law. It shouldn't be taken as proof Elmo has screwed the pooch, but it can be read as making clear Elmo hasn't a clue what he's doing.

I listen to MSNBC via Sirius in the mornings, and a regular advertiser there promotes an HR company you can access remotely for your small business (save the cost of HR employees is the idea). I have no idea how good or bad an idea this is, or whether it works well. But they discuss scenarios where you get yourself crosswise with employment law in a heartbeat if you don't have somebody minding that ship. It occurs to me Elmo might want to give them a call. He's probably fired the entire HR department at Twitter by now. 

And the above legal review is just for American employees. Twitter is an international company. I wonder if Elmo meant his "memo" to go to all employees around the world. Or is he just screwing the American ones over?

Questions like this do not keep me up at night.