Tag: preventing
Twitter layoff lawsuit is aimed at preventing a repeat of Tesla layoffs
Current and former Twitter employees began a class action lawsuit on Thursday concerning the current wave of high-profile layoffs at Twitter. The suit claims that the embattled social media company is in violation of labor laws, particularly federal and state versions of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. The filing also notes that one plaintiff did not receive any severance pay.
Twitter, the suit claims, failed to give the legally required 60-day notice about impending job cuts to employees, as well as the California Employment Development Department, which was also supposed to be notified according to state law. But the suit may not end up before a judge and could be viewed less as a case for the courts, and more as a negotiating tactic aimed at protecting those who are subject to these layoffs, organized by a lawyer who has sued on behalf of Elon Musk’s former workers in the past.
A similar lawsuit against Tesla, where Musk is CEO, was moved out of the public eye and into arbitration on Friday. The round of layoffs at Tesla that led to the suit occurred back in June.
You’ll recall that Musk acquired the formerly publicly-traded company Twitter, Inc. last week after a drawn-out haggling process that lasted months. The finalization of that sale turned Twitter into the property of the world’s richest person. So on Thursday, Musk used the sudden, unilateral power he wields over his favorite toy to begin the process of liquidating the jobs of roughly 3,700 human people, or half the company.
Twitter founder and ex-CEO Jack Dorsey, for his part, seems eager to take on the blame for these layoffs instead of Musk. He tweeted on Saturday “I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that.”
The lawyer organizing the suit, Shannon Liss-Riordan, told a local ABC News affiliate in Boston on Friday that this action was preemptive. She anticipated that workers were vulnerable to these alleged violations based on previous business practices around layoffs at Tesla, which are cited in the Twitter suit. Those layoffs, Liss-Riordan said, “were done without any notice.” She also claimed that Musk “is an employer who has a history of thumbing his nose at federal labor laws.”
At Tesla, Liss-Riordan claims, “Employees were immediately asked to sign away all of their rights for a week or two of severance pay, even though the federal and state WARN Act requires 60 days severance pay when there is a mass layoff,” she said.
This time around, Liss-Riordan told Bloomberg on Friday, Musk “is making an effort to comply” with the law. “I am pleased that Elon Musk learned something from the lawsuit we brought against him at Tesla,” she said.
Musk claims that everyone “exited” in this round of layoffs received an offer including “3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.” But it’s not yet clear what sort of agreements laid-off employees have to sign in order to become the recipients of Musk’s generosity.
According to The Washington Post, it appears employees are being subject to a practice called “pay in place of notice,” in order to stay roughly within the bounds of the law. Instead of warning them 60 or 90 days in advance that layoffs are coming, this plan pays them through 60 or 90 days and keeps them employed on paper for all that time, even though they’re not working anymore. But the Post also notes that according to The Labor Department, this actually still violates the law.
New York lawyer Misty Marris told the legal blog Law & Crime that citing the Tesla layoffs in the suit against a different company controlled by Musk is unusual. Also unusual, according to Marris, is a request in the suit for a court order requiring Twitter to advise laid-off employees of their rights under the WARN ACT.
“In general,” Marris further explained to Law & Crime, “there are clauses in severance agreements that give employees time to contemplate the severance agreement and also to assess that they fully read and understand the agreement.”
But far from being unusual, this round of layoffs itself appears to be in keeping with Musk’s established strategy for putting people out of work, and keeping the ensuing legal matters out of the actual courts. It worked when he did it at Tesla. Let’s see if it works again.
Preventing video piracy in the age of streaming
Rohan Tewari’s group won two awards at the BT Young Scientist 2022 competition for their project, which aims to detect illegally streamed video content.
A Major Trial Shows Mixed Results for Colonoscopy in Preventing Cancer Deaths
A large, 10-year randomized trial has found that simply recommending a common screening procedure for colorectal cancer may not be as beneficial for the general public as hoped for. The study found no difference in cancer death rates between healthy middle-aged people who were or weren’t offered a colonoscopy, though…
California sues Amazon for preventing third-party sellers offering cheaper prices elsewhere
Amazon still can’t avoid lawsuits over third-party prices. The New York Timesreports California has filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing Amazon of violating both the Cartwright Act and state competition law through its pricing rules. The internet giant is stifling competition by preventing sellers from offering lower prices on other sites, according to Attorney General Rob Bonta. If they defy Amazon, they risk losing buy buttons, prominent listings or even basic access to Amazon’s marketplace.
If successful, the lawsuit would bar any contracts deemed anti-competitive and notify sellers that they’re free to reduce prices elsewhere. Amazon would also have to pay damages, return “ill-gotten gains” and appoint a court-approved overseer.
In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said California had the situation “exactly backwards.” Third-parties still have control over prices, Amazon claimed, and inclusion in the “Buy Box” space supposedly shows that a deal is truly competitive. It further contended that the suit would raise prices. You can read the full statement below.
The case is similar to a District of Columbia lawsuit. The region’s Superior Court dismissed that case in March citing a lack of evidence, but Attorney General Karl Racine is appealing the decision.
Amazon is facing increasing government scrutiny of its practices. The Federal Trade Commission has been investigating issues ranging from major acquisitions through to withheld driver tips, while EU pressure prompted Amazon to revise its seller program and improve third parties’ chances of competing with direct sales. The tech firm has balked at these moves, and went so far as to both demand the FTC chair’s recusal as well as fight agency requests to interview executives. Don’t expect either side to back down any time soon, in other words.
“Similar to the D.C. Attorney General—whose complaint was dismissed by the courts—the California Attorney General has it exactly backwards. Sellers set their own prices for the products they offer in our store. Amazon takes pride in the fact that we offer low prices across the broadest selection, and like any store we reserve the right not to highlight offers to customers that are not priced competitively. The relief the AG seeks would force Amazon to feature higher prices to customers, oddly going against core objectives of antitrust law. We hope that the California court will reach the same conclusion as the D.C. court and dismiss this lawsuit promptly.”
Meta settles Facebook/Cambridge Analytica class-action lawsuit, preventing Zuckerberg from testifying
Facebook endured what was arguably (it’s had plenty) the company’s biggest PR disaster to date when news that now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested the personal data of 90 million users for targeted political ads during the UK’s Brexit referendum and 2016 US presidential campaign.
Apex Legends bug preventing high level rewards is now fixed
Respawn devs say that an Apex Legends bug preventing level up rewards from being correctly obtained by high level players in the FPS game has now been fixed. The issue – introduced during the game’s current season 14, Hunted – affected players who are level 500 or higher, and the team has given some insight into what went into resolving the bug as well as how it has tried to prevent similar issues from occurring in the battle royale game in the future.
Respawn says that players over level 500 who were not correctly receiving their rewards for levelling up should now find their missing rewards in their inventory upon launching the game. The team says the bug was caused as part of the Apex Legends level cap increase introduced in season 14, which sees the cap raised from 500 to 2000 through a prestige-like system that loops players back around through the rewards for levels one through 500 three additional times after their first.
“We have many different systems that keep track of players’ levels, rewards, and overall progress in the game,” explains senior community manager Kalyrical in a post on the game’s subreddit. “When updating our level cap, some of these systems started to get matched. In this instance, we were able to develop a fix that didn’t require its own update and could take effect through our back end systems.” In addition, Kalyrical notes that more sync checks have been put in place that should see the game automatically detect similar mismatches and grant the appropriate rewards where necessary.
RELATED LINKS: Apex Legends characters guide, Apex Legends skins, Apex Legends map guide