101–110 of 139 posts
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Exactly: we already have plenty of areas where a civil case can turn into a criminal one like fraud (just ask Elizabeth Holmes). Saying "we'll pay you severance" with 0 intention to do so sure sounds like fraud to me.
Wage theft and fraud are crimes that state attorneys general do prosecute. https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-f...
How did we get to this place that so much of our media landscape was centralized within one failing company on Market Street in San Francisco?
I have long held that Twitter should have been bought by a consortium of media companies and run as a market utility. It’s been the media internet’s comment section for long enough that the BBC, MSNBC, Sinclair and even OANN ought to have understood the value of sharing it.
But we don’t make those anymore. Haven’t for a while. If we didn’t already have email, I doubt we could create it (and have it take off) today.
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> We don't have debtors prisons. No one's suggesting such. We have plenty of disputed behavior and harms that are within the purview of civil courts, and then more egregious versions that are crimes. IMO, withholding significant pay that you have the ability to pay and is unambiguously contractually owed causes pretty serious harm, and society has strong reasons to criminalize this conduct. Accepting services from so…
Severance is typically not "unambiguously contractually owed." The fact that many here would want company executives imprisoned for not offering goodwill boggles my mind.
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Wage theft and fraud are crimes that state attorneys general do prosecute. https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-f...
Not paying severance is not wage theft. Severance was not included in Twitter's employee contract.
It likely was once promises were made to continue to pay severance for at least one year, and employees relied upon this promise (instead of immediately seeking to work elsewhere).
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Sorry, wage theft is done by people in corporations, therefore it doesn't count as real theft, so going to jail for it is almost impossible. If you wanna get away with a crime, do it in a company.
It need not be that way, as Sarbanes-Oxley demonstrates.
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There needs to be criminal consequences for company officeholders. If you are wilfully withholding pay then it should be mandatory jail time. Legislation is underway here in Australia for such an approach after 7/11 et al systemically withheld pay knowing that the financial consequences weren't going to personally affect them.
We don't have debtors prisons. While there are specific cases like this where some jail time would seem just, overall it's a negative for society. It's a civil matter for a reason. I do think such cases should rip the corporate veil to shreds though, and the billionaires would have to pay up.
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> overall it's a negative for society I would disagree. We shouldn't allow criminal behaviour to be tolerated just because it's white collar. And the whole point of laws is to protect the vulnerable in our society which definitely includes the innocent employees who are being harmed for doing nothing other than working for Twitter/X.
How is it criminal behavior to not offer severance, which 99% of companies don't offer? Not offering severance has nothing to do with criminal behavior. If so, 99% of small businesses owners would be imprisoned in your world.
"Protect the vulnerable" there probably means enforcing contractual obligations to pay severance that was promised, not to offer severance in the first place.
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How about prison time for executives who use the legal system in bad faith? Refusing to pay is not permissible.
Sorry, wage theft is done by people in corporations, therefore it doesn't count as real theft, so going to jail for it is almost impossible. If you wanna get away with a crime, do it in a company.
Might have been a CrimethInc. cell, I don't recall.