In Twit news: eviction and lawsuits

[thewayne]

The Muskbro bought the company in October 2022. Many Twitter employees stayed on for the expected and promised annual bonus that was normally paid out in the first quarter of the year, bypassing job offers for new and better positions.

Care to guess whether or not the bonus was paid?

A class action lawsuit has been filed for non-payment, saying over $5,000,000 is owed to current and former employees.

In other news of the Twitterverse, employees of a Denver-area office building - I think I drove past it once or twice - were EVICTED for rent non-payment. The landlord had access to a slush fund and when rent wasn't paid they accessed it, which activated a legal requirement that Twitter replenish the slush fund. They did not, and the landlord began eviction proceedings, which culminated in the building being vacated earlier this month.

According to the Ars article linked below, there are TWENTY lawsuits against the Mustbrat for nonpayment of various services, including the lease on the HQ in San Fran.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/musk-owned-twitter-stiffed-employees-on-promised-bonuses-class-action-says/

Comments

[devilc]

JFC. I could make less of a hash of the whole situation.

[thewayne]

Isn't a fairly common norm in business that you pay your debt?  Perhaps I was absent that day in my accounting classes.

[armiphlage]

Perhaps Musk is following Trump's strategy of not paying bills, and dragging creditors through protracted litigation until they give up or settle for pennies on the dollar?

For most people lawsuits are expensive, but if you already have lawyers on salary, the marginal cost could be lower than paying. Apparently Trump was the master of this, not even paying some of his lawyers.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/09/donald-trump-unpaid-bills-republican-president-laswuits/85297274/

[disneydream06]

Dear Mr. Moneybags,
Start paying your bills.

Wonder how big of a tax write off he will get when he kills off Twitter?
Hugs, Jon

[dewline]

I hope those various plaintiffs get to own the company. That will bring headaches of an entirely different kind, and it will still be an improvement over the present situation.

[thewayne]

Some rich people do this, but as a rule not 'old money' rich people.  Ol' Donny is not 'old money'.  With the Muskbrat, it's hard to say.  He came from a rich family, but he's certainly being a jerk to people whom Twitter legitimately owes money.  If he's just stalling for cash and time to get his feet under him while reorganizing things, there's better ways to do this than just shafting creditors.

[silveradept]

I'm not surprised at this. He seems to be trying his best to destroy whatever value there was with the company so that it will disappear or be sold and no longer have to be his problem. Even if he's trying to make us believe he wants to run it as a profitable venture.

[thewayne]

Apparently the woman he appointed/anointed as CEO has started paying bills and talking to creditors and advertisers.  She is not going far afield from the Muskbrat's proclamations of FREE SPEEECH.  Time will tell what shall happen.  He has the problem that if he completely tanks Twitter, banks might be much less willing to lend him any credit for other and future ventures.

[silveradept]

In theory, that should be a check on Musk, but then again, we've seen that Trump was still able to get money even after a long history of stiffing people and not paying the bills.

I'm not surprised that the new CEO is staying on the line of free speech, since that's probably the thing that's bringing in whatever income there is, at least until they can manage to get rid of Elon and get the advertisers back on board.

[thewayne]

I don't know that they can get rid of Elon: he took it private, technically he (or his creditors) own it.  Someone would have to buy it off him, and in its current state, I can't see that happening.  He's made it so toxic that it would take an extremely wealthy nutter to take it over, and while there are many of those around, most of the ones wealthy enough are also smart enough to see what a flaming trash heap he's turned it in to and stay well away.