I wonder if this legally really is the case. Twitter seems to have asked "Do you still want to work here", giving an option to affirm. They didn't say "you have to go", they said "you may go if you do not like the new direction of the company, please tell us which one it is".
I'd be rather careful with that, and not just proclaim these people were terminated. I see a rather good chance court could rule very differently.
The magic proclamation is actually going the other way. If the company is ending the employment, that is termination. The company does not get to simply say "well you've resigned."
Perhaps you're not arguing termination vs resignation but rather whether they're entitled to unemployment and wrongful termination protection? That's more open for debate, but the former employees are entitled to those considerations (which they would not be had they resigned).
Likely that contract doesn't have a clause that states it only remains valid if the employee clicks on "yes" in death march emails.
So, the contract remains valid until either the employee quits or the employer terminates. Not reacting to an email is not quitting.
I'm pretty sure that legally, the employees that received that email and didn't click/answer are still considered employees. They are only terminated once they received their actual termination papers, not an "if / then" email.
Are you seriously saying you spend 8+ hours a day working for a company and don't have a contract that manages your rights (like salary, PTO, ...) and obligations (work hours, presence, ...)?
Most American workers have an employment agreement with generalized clauses to the effect of "we can terminate you at any time for any reason" and "hours are thusly unless management needs you otherwise" and "duties are so-and-so but also anything else we want you to do."
I've had jobs where I kept the software running so smoothly 80% of my time at work was spent with a broom or a rag cleaning because "downtime" was not a thing.
Federal employment laws, state employment laws, and court precedents substitute for a detailed contract for many employees in the U.S.
This is in fact a big reason that companies like to use so many contractors: it’s way easier to manage the downside risk for a contractor because the employer’s liability is scoped entirely to one written agreement. Whereas their relationship with employees is scoped to the broad set of laws and precedents mentioned in my first paragraph.
European here. What do you mean? Employment contracts are not common or mandatory? Unheard of here. I painted my grandma's house for money and we still wrote a single page contract.
There are employment agreements, but they typically only cover protections for the company - not stealing IP, no competition clause, etc.
Since most states are at will employment, you don’t need a reason to fire someone, just like an employee doesn’t need a reason to quit. Both parties can end employment without cause at any time for any reason. There are some varying exceptions to this, but it’s mostly the case.
Guessing here but I think the implication is that courts in the US are unable/unwilling to enforce workers rights even when laid out in a contract. In a post-union US there is not enough organised support for workers unless they are very rich.
Obviously employees all (maybe almost all) have employment contracts
Many W-2 employees still have a contract. It's quite common for an employment contract to exist for regular salaried employees, and extremely common at companies like Twitter.
We do have work contracts, but for salaried employees they are often :
"You work for us, we pay you (salary amount) and you will do everything we ask you to and thanks to 'right to work' laws we can fire you at anytime for any or no reason"
I'm guessing this is the case because "I didn't see the email" is plausible. I think all my jobs have asked for a one sentence resignation email to HR just so everyone's on the same page.
It has nothing to do with the plausibility of seeing the email or not. Somebody could say “yeah I read that email. It was stupid and I wasn’t going to respond to it. I would still like to work here though, just not on double hours.”
There is a lot of tailwind for California's economy. If I were starting a new company, I would stay away from California. Every possible metric is worse except for network effects and access to capital in SV.
>I wonder if that’s why people are moving out of California at a record rate. Same with companies
Probably because they are no longer competitive to afford them. If you want to argue that there needs to be a more compassionate, less capitalist competition to California then I'll walk back my argument as I would agree that there are tradeoffs there. If you were discussing there needing "to be some competition to California model" and referencing capitalistic model then I will still point to the fact that gdp per capita puts California as the best subnational polity
>Every possible metric is worse except for network effects and access to capital in SV.
Again if you meant to compare this to a non capitalistic market then you have a point, but if this is capitalism vs capitalism that's like saying "if you just remove all the ways they are winning, aren't they actually losing?"
Is it that simple though? By your logic it's possible to never fire anyone, just change the contract until they resign... doesn't really make sense to me.
No, I didn't say that. And there it really becomes tricky, If they try to unilaterally change terms of the contract, they cannot do that. However, at the same time an employee is not entitled to dictate the direction of a company. I am pretty sure a lot of the "perks" that might go away in favor or "hardcore mode" weren't contractually guaranteed. The terms of the employment contract wouldn't have changed then. If they muddle around e.g. with pay or work hours that would be quite different.
I don't really see the "constructive dismissal" argument either that others brought up, as that would require the employer deliberately creating a hostile work environment. Just saying "we're going into hardcore mode" and taking away some perks that weren't guaranteed wouldn't yet fulfill that. There might be of course other shit that twitter/Musk pulled/pulls that may legally satisfy a constructive dismissal. The email, in my laypersons view, wouldn't be enough.
However there is a strong point about the "missed the email" argument, and the non-affirmative nature of the "resignations" it creates. I think that's a rather strong point in favor of the employees. But then again, never underestimate courts ability to render "surprising" rulings.
My guess is though that twitter would not just "dismiss" everybody who did not respond. At the very least HR would get in touch with those people anyway, at which point employees can say "oh wait, what email?". I'd think the email is just meant as a pre-filter to save time by filtering out what people you do not need to talk to because they want to stay anyway.
I'd be rather careful with that, and not just proclaim these people were terminated. I see a rather good chance court could rule very differently.