4 ms·

Class action filed against SpaceX over mass layoffs

23 points by salemh 12y ago

DiabloD3 12y ago
Given how smart Elon Musk is about issues like this, this is rather hard to believe.
marktangotango 12y ago
>>The lawsuit alleges that SpaceX ordered mass layoffs of approximately 400 employees on July 21, without giving them advance notice. Employment law not withstanding, I didn't know they'd had a layoff. Anyone else have any info?
- hga 12y ago
  See the major discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8154866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8154866 In short, they claim they were just laying off their "bottom" 5% a week after doing reviews, and are in the process of hiring an additional 20% new employees. Whether this constitutes a layoff is at the moment unclear; it's been noted that at least one other company (in)famous for this practice treated these actions as layoffs, and of course if they were "fired for cause" as SpaceX seems to be claiming they aren't due unemployment, which of course would increase what SpaceX has to pay for that. The nastier claim is that SpaceX didn't pay all the back wages/salaries they were due, which is rather white line and something the government cares rather a lot about, if for no other reason than it deprives them of taxes.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    > The nastier claim is that SpaceX didn't pay all the back wages/salaries they were due, which is rather white line and something the government cares rather a lot about, if for no other reason than it deprives them of taxes. This is outright illegal, and California labor law is very clear on this. If true, not only will back wages need to be paid, there are steep penalties. Its up there with not paying your tax withholdings to the state/federal governments (i.e. personal liability).
  - Someone 12y ago
    I don't think deprivement of taxes has anything to do with it. "A deal is a deal" is one of the things that society depends on heavily and that we have government for to enforce. If companies can get away with that, what stops me from agreeing with a builder that he builds a house for me for $100k, and, when he is almost done, saying "I changed my mind, I'll pay you only $75k" or anything similar to that?
    - BerislavLopac 12y ago
      Well, this attitude is not that uncommon, which is easily seen if you read http://clientsfromhell.net/ http://clientsfromhell.net/ with any regularity. And in come countries this is the norm.
    - hga 12y ago
      I judge this in part based on some experience in Virginia, where I was working for a startup that just before/as I joined got a couple of "devil" investors who we eventually realized preferred to own all of nothing instead of something of something. Sufficiently bad we retained a law firm and one day most of the company sent in our resignation from its office, 13 people from CEO and President to all the senior engineers. These "devils" then refused to pay our salaries for the pay period up to that date, and I learned, working with the (former) company lawyer, that doing this was not just a misdemeanor, but there was a state agency staffed with humorless people (they've heard everything) tasked with extracting back pay from employers. In most other domains there's no criminal law involved nor any special units of government tasked with this. Note also that Virginia is considered by many not to be "worker friendly". Your example is an interesting one. Perhaps because stiffing builders and people who repair stuff is so easy, and most certainly because this involves real estate or other tangible personal property (e.g. a car), there's legal, but still civil law mechanisms in most/all states to make them whole, they can get what's generally called a Mechanic's Lien: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanic's_lien https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanic's_lien
  - jccooper 12y ago
    Hard to believe they wouldn't pay already earned wages. That's pretty foundational to payroll law and the mere concept of doing that (at least, if your company is not already essentially dead) should cause several heads in HR and legal to explode. It's hard to say without reading the actual filing, which I'm not going to bother with, but I think they don't mean actual back pay, but rather the notification-plus-60-days-worth of pay that should be due (if it is a layoff). Based on: "“Because defendants failed to pay plaintiffs and other similarly situated employees their wages…defendants failed to pay those employees timely after each employee’s separation of employment,” the complaint states." I would think that makes it part of the general "it's actually a layoff but you didn't treat it like one" theory of the suit, which is arguable, rather than not actually paying accrued wages, which is not.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - keithpeter 12y ago
    >> In short, they claim they were just laying off their "bottom" 5% a week after doing reviews, and are in the process of hiring an additional 20% new employees. I note your use of speech marks around the word bottom. I'm just wondering how you put structural technicians on a scale. In other words, does the effectiveness of an individual in this kind of multiply connected technical environment not basically depend on a lot of other people? It isn't selling vacuum cleaners really is it?
    - hga 12y ago
      In this context double quotation marks have an even more specific name, scare quotes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes I of course used them precisely for the sorts reasons you cite: outside of domains like sales, where there are concrete metrics, this sort of thing is necessarily a political exercise, one that has harmed many companies including Microsoft. However, if you read the referenced bigger discussion, you'll get some hints that maybe SpaceX can get away with this, essentially their employees believe they're on a mission, which is something I can understand. Although I still wonder about the viability of a super-high tech, literally rocket science, company with an average tenure of 1.5 years. Perhaps they'll end up losing one or more zillion dollar payloads due to this and then try to change their ways, but that can be extremely difficult once a company is driven at the micro level by internal politics instead of external success.
      - keithpeter 12y ago
        I take your point, but I'm still trying to work out how you put technicians on a scale. I have some knowledge of medium scale construction projects (50 tenancy flats aka apartments) and the builders are contracted, assemble stuff in the right order, then complete their contracts. If there is one operative that is obviously not performing/dangerous, they get invited to leave. None of this 'worst 5%' malarkey.
- bane 12y ago
  I've posting stuff on this for the last couple weeks, it's basically been ignored on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078194 also discussion on reddit 14 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8089945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8089945
  - hga 12y ago
    "Ignored" is probably too strong a characterization, it's capricious which submissions get attention and front/2nd page positioning. And your first link about got 35 comments and some high quality discussion, that's not bad at all.
    - bane 12y ago
      Sorry I wasn't clear, I meant, the topic itself.

23 points by salemh 12y ago

Given how smart Elon Musk is about issues like this, this is rather hard to believe.

>>The lawsuit alleges that SpaceX ordered mass layoffs of approximately 400 employees on July 21, without giving them advance notice. Employment law not withstanding, I didn't know they'd had a layoff. Anyone else have any info?

hga 12y ago
See the major discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8154866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8154866 In short, they claim they were just laying off their "bottom" 5% a week after doing reviews, and are in the process of hiring an additional 20% new employees. Whether this constitutes a layoff is at the moment unclear; it's been noted that at least one other company (in)famous for this practice treated these actions as layoffs, and of course if they were "fired for cause" as SpaceX seems to be claiming they aren't due unemployment, which of course would increase what SpaceX has to pay for that. The nastier claim is that SpaceX didn't pay all the back wages/salaries they were due, which is rather white line and something the government cares rather a lot about, if for no other reason than it deprives them of taxes.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  > The nastier claim is that SpaceX didn't pay all the back wages/salaries they were due, which is rather white line and something the government cares rather a lot about, if for no other reason than it deprives them of taxes. This is outright illegal, and California labor law is very clear on this. If true, not only will back wages need to be paid, there are steep penalties. Its up there with not paying your tax withholdings to the state/federal governments (i.e. personal liability).
- Someone 12y ago
  I don't think deprivement of taxes has anything to do with it. "A deal is a deal" is one of the things that society depends on heavily and that we have government for to enforce. If companies can get away with that, what stops me from agreeing with a builder that he builds a house for me for $100k, and, when he is almost done, saying "I changed my mind, I'll pay you only $75k" or anything similar to that?
  - BerislavLopac 12y ago
    Well, this attitude is not that uncommon, which is easily seen if you read http://clientsfromhell.net/ http://clientsfromhell.net/ with any regularity. And in come countries this is the norm.
  - hga 12y ago
    I judge this in part based on some experience in Virginia, where I was working for a startup that just before/as I joined got a couple of "devil" investors who we eventually realized preferred to own all of nothing instead of something of something. Sufficiently bad we retained a law firm and one day most of the company sent in our resignation from its office, 13 people from CEO and President to all the senior engineers. These "devils" then refused to pay our salaries for the pay period up to that date, and I learned, working with the (former) company lawyer, that doing this was not just a misdemeanor, but there was a state agency staffed with humorless people (they've heard everything) tasked with extracting back pay from employers. In most other domains there's no criminal law involved nor any special units of government tasked with this. Note also that Virginia is considered by many not to be "worker friendly". Your example is an interesting one. Perhaps because stiffing builders and people who repair stuff is so easy, and most certainly because this involves real estate or other tangible personal property (e.g. a car), there's legal, but still civil law mechanisms in most/all states to make them whole, they can get what's generally called a Mechanic's Lien: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanic's_lien https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanic's_lien
- jccooper 12y ago
  Hard to believe they wouldn't pay already earned wages. That's pretty foundational to payroll law and the mere concept of doing that (at least, if your company is not already essentially dead) should cause several heads in HR and legal to explode. It's hard to say without reading the actual filing, which I'm not going to bother with, but I think they don't mean actual back pay, but rather the notification-plus-60-days-worth of pay that should be due (if it is a layoff). Based on: "“Because defendants failed to pay plaintiffs and other similarly situated employees their wages…defendants failed to pay those employees timely after each employee’s separation of employment,” the complaint states." I would think that makes it part of the general "it's actually a layoff but you didn't treat it like one" theory of the suit, which is arguable, rather than not actually paying accrued wages, which is not.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- keithpeter 12y ago
  >> In short, they claim they were just laying off their "bottom" 5% a week after doing reviews, and are in the process of hiring an additional 20% new employees. I note your use of speech marks around the word bottom. I'm just wondering how you put structural technicians on a scale. In other words, does the effectiveness of an individual in this kind of multiply connected technical environment not basically depend on a lot of other people? It isn't selling vacuum cleaners really is it?
  - hga 12y ago
    In this context double quotation marks have an even more specific name, scare quotes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes I of course used them precisely for the sorts reasons you cite: outside of domains like sales, where there are concrete metrics, this sort of thing is necessarily a political exercise, one that has harmed many companies including Microsoft. However, if you read the referenced bigger discussion, you'll get some hints that maybe SpaceX can get away with this, essentially their employees believe they're on a mission, which is something I can understand. Although I still wonder about the viability of a super-high tech, literally rocket science, company with an average tenure of 1.5 years. Perhaps they'll end up losing one or more zillion dollar payloads due to this and then try to change their ways, but that can be extremely difficult once a company is driven at the micro level by internal politics instead of external success.
    - keithpeter 12y ago
      I take your point, but I'm still trying to work out how you put technicians on a scale. I have some knowledge of medium scale construction projects (50 tenancy flats aka apartments) and the builders are contracted, assemble stuff in the right order, then complete their contracts. If there is one operative that is obviously not performing/dangerous, they get invited to leave. None of this 'worst 5%' malarkey.
bane 12y ago
I've posting stuff on this for the last couple weeks, it's basically been ignored on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078194 also discussion on reddit 14 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8089945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8089945
- hga 12y ago
  "Ignored" is probably too strong a characterization, it's capricious which submissions get attention and front/2nd page positioning. And your first link about got 35 comments and some high quality discussion, that's not bad at all.
  - bane 12y ago
    Sorry I wasn't clear, I meant, the topic itself.