If 2023 was the year of Elon Musk f–cking around, here’s to hoping that 2024 is the year that he really finds out. Last year, Elno told the employees who survived his mass layoffs in early November that they would receive 50% of their 2022 bonuses if they stayed with Twitter through the end of March 2023. In a turn of events that no one (everyone) saw coming, the bonuses were never paid out. So, his now former Senior Director of Compensation, Mark Schobinger, filed a lawsuit on behalf of himself and 2,000 other current and former employees to get that money, baby. Despite Space Karen’s best efforts to move the case to Texas, a federal judge in San Francisco, where Twitter has its headquarters, has ruled that under California law, Twitter is in breach of contract. Pay up, Apartheid Clyde.
Elon Musk violated employee contracts by stiffing workers at his social media company X out of millions of dollars worth of promised bonuses, according to a San Francisco federal judge. US District Court Judge Vince Chhabria, who was appointed to the post by Barack Obama, allowed a lawsuit against the company formerly known as Twitter to proceed on Friday.
Mark Schobinger, who was Twitter’s senior director of compensation before leaving Musk’s company in May, filed a lawsuit against X in May alleging breach of contract. Schobinger alleged in the lawsuit that senior company officials made verbal promises both before and after Musk acquired the platform for $44 billion last year that its employees would be paid 50% of their 2022 bonuses if they stayed with the firm through the first quarter of this year.
But the bonuses were never paid, it was alleged in the complaint.
Schobinger’s lawsuit was filed on behalf of himself as well as approximately 2,000 other current and former employees of X. The plaintiffs are seeking in excess of $5 million. In denying Twitter’s motion to dismiss the case, Chhabria ruled that Schobinger plausibly stated a breach of contract claim under California law and he was covered by a bonus plan.
“Once Schobinger did what Twitter asked, Twitter’s offer to pay him a bonus in return became a binding contract under California law. And by allegedly refusing to pay Schobinger his promised bonus, Twitter violated that contract,” the judge wrote.
Twitter’s lawyers argued that the company made only an oral promise that was not a contract, and that Texas law should govern the case, according to Courthouse News, which first reported the ruling.
The judge ruled that California law governed the case and that “Twitter’s contrary arguments all fail.”
While $5 million is a lot of money to us peons, it’s really a drop in the bucket for the big tech companies. Twitter is certainly not worth close to the $44 billion that Musk paid for it, but it’s still reportedly worth somewhere around $19 billion. Before Elon ran Twitter into the ground – whether intentionally or unintentionally – he could have paid out those bonuses. I know the whole industry has a volatile reputation for paying its workers well but treating them terribly, but this whole situation says a lot more about how bad of a leader and all-around sh–ty human being Musk is than anything else. I think Jacob Marley and the three spirits need to pay Elon a visit next Christmas.
Picture note by CB: These are just stock photos of overworked people because I know you don’t want to look at Elno’s stupid face. Credit: Resume Genius on Unsplash, Yan Krukau, Mikhail Nilov and Keira Burton on Pexels
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