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Tag: severance pay

  • How 1 LinkedIn Post Shows the Ruthless Reach of the Starbucks Layoffs

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    What’s colder than a mocha frappuccino? Losing your job while on maternity leave.

    That’s the reality former Starbucks recruiter Leslee Hemenway faces after being laid off by the coffee chain, according to her LinkedIn post on Monday. Hemenway worked at Starbucks for seven years and was one of their retail management interns during college, her LinkedIn profile reads. She was one of the 900 non-retail employees laid off from Starbucks last week.

    “Being laid off while on maternity leave feels like a sick joke, but it’s the reality I’m presently facing,” Hemenway’s post said.

    Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol said the layoffs were a “difficult decision” to tighten the company’s costs, he announced online. Employees were instructed to work from home on the day laid-off employees were notified. Affected employees will receive “generous severance and support packages including benefits extensions,” according to Niccol. Starbucks did not return a request for comment by the time of publication to offer a more detailed explanation.

    “I know these decisions impact our partners and their families, and we did not make them lightly,” Niccol said in a company announcement. “I believe these steps are necessary to build a better, stronger, and more resilient Starbucks that deepens its impact on the world and creates more opportunities for our partners, suppliers, and the communities we serve.”

    In addition to corporate layoffs, Starbucks is also closing hundreds of its U.S. stores, including its flagship Reserve Roastery near its Seattle headquarters. The company said it was closing locations where they don’t see “a path to financial performance,” and they’re unable “to create the physical environment our customers and partners expect.” Baristas working at the closing stores are being transferred to other locations, when possible, Niccol said. In cases where transfers are not possible, these workers will be given a severance and are encouraged to “come back” when new stores and roles open.

    As for Hemenway, she’s going to use the severance package she received to take time to bond with her newborn.

    “After the birth of my daughter this summer, I’m going to savor the time I have with her and not actively pursue a new role for now,” Hemenway said on LinkedIn. “However, if you know of something that might be a particularly good fit in recruiting or talent management, please feel free to send it my way.”

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    Kayla Webster

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  • Saint Rose adjunct faculty demand severance pay

    Saint Rose adjunct faculty demand severance pay

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    ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) -Adjunct faculty and staff at the College of Saint Rose are demanding severance pay when the College shuts down. Some professors tell NEWS10’s Anthony Krolikowski there is currently no help to be given to them after the spring semester and summer classes end.

    According to the College’s website, more than half of the faculty at Saint Rose is part-time, or adjunct. Laura Hartmann and Kelly Bird said after graduation, they eventually became adjunct professors. After years of dedication, they say it’s time the College shows support for its employees who sacrifice the most.

    A union representing a portion of the 134 part-time employees at Saint Rose is advocating for what they say is “a little more than the cost of a class” for severance pay. That’s why over a week ago, the union sent out an email to the school community.

    “It was the first I had heard about it. When I read the email, I got thinking about what a great idea that is,” described Adjunct Faculty Member of the Music Industry Program, Laura Hartmann.

    Hartmann and Bird bring real-world experience into their classrooms, but say having part-time jobs comes with drawbacks. “So many people have kept the College running for so long without health insurance, without any other employee benefits, and an equal salary… We’re still here,” stated Senior Teaching Artist, Kelly Bird.

    The two faculty members hope Saint Rose will provide the financial support they feel they’ve earned.

    “They’re having to give incentives to the upper administrative people that are going to be sticking around as far as I can tell to be on-site real estate agents, if you will,” said Bird. “And they were the stewards of this school and they didn’t steward it well. That’s the part that really burns,” added Hartmann.

    As the final semester winds down, teach-out plans have been created and job fairs planned for students to prepare for their future. NEWS10 reported that along with students, the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences welcomed eight Saint Rose faculty with new jobs.

    As far as the next steps, Bird and Hartmann are pressuring the College to do what they call the right thing in a follow-up letter to the union’s first email. “So far, they have ignored what the Union has requested. They said they will get back to us. We’ve heard nothing. So, we are waiting to see what they’re going to say.”

    NEWS10 reached out to the College on where severance pay for the adjunct professors and faculty currently stands and is awaiting a response.

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    Anthony Krolikowski

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  • Former Twitter employees get severance offer after months of waiting. Many are unhappy with it | CNN Business

    Former Twitter employees get severance offer after months of waiting. Many are unhappy with it | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    After months of uncertainty and feeling left in the dark, many former Twitter employees impacted by a mass layoff in early November began receiving their severance offers over the weekend. But some are frustrated by the offer and the conditions attached to it.

    The severance offer promises one month’s pay in exchange for agreeing to various terms, including a non-disparagement agreement and waiving the right to take any legal action against the company, according to Lisa Bloom, a lawyer representing dozens of former Twitter employees affected by the layoffs.

    Many were dissatisfied by the offer, according to public posts and attorneys representing ex-employees, saying it falls short of the “3 months of severance” that new owner Elon Musk had previously promised would be provided. (That time period appeared to include pay for the 60-days advanced notice Twitter was obligated to provide under various state laws.) The amount is also significantly less than provided at rivals like Facebook-parent Meta, which laid off thousands of workers around the same time and guaranteed them 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for each year they were employed at the company.

    The former Twitter employees are now stuck deciding whether to accept the money or join the hundreds of others who have already filed arbitration demands or lawsuits against the company.

    “We’ve been hearing from hundreds of Twitter employees who are considering their options and not happy about only being offered one month severance, after they were promised much more,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, another lawyer working on behalf of former Twitter employees, told CNN in a statement Monday. “We have filed hundreds of arbitration claims already and will continue to file them.”

    The severance fight comes as Musk scrambles to cut costs at the company he bought in October for $44 billion, including a significant amount of debt. After laying off half the company in early November, Musk continued cutting and pushing out additional employees, including by requiring anyone who remained to sign a pledge committing to “hardcore” work.

    Twitter’s trust and safety team experienced at least a dozen additional cuts on Friday, according to a report from Bloomberg over the weekend.

    Bloom, who said she has also filed dozens of demands for arbitration on behalf of former Twitter employees, said the severance offer does not include pro-rated bonuses or accelerated stock vesting for eligible employees, which could amount to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost funds for some affected workers. The company typically provided such benefits to laid-off employees prior to Musk’s acquisition, she said.

    The severance offer would also require that employees who sign agree not to cooperate as a witness in any legal actions brought by third parties against Twitter. But they would also have to agree to cooperate on behalf of Twitter in its defense to “provide truthful information” as a witness in any legal action against the company, according to the attorneys.

    One Twitter employee laid off during the early November mass layoffs tweeted over the weekend urging fellow affected employees not to “click or accept ANYTHING in that package” without first speaking to an attorney. “For me personally, the money is one component,” they said. “It’s about principle. I strongly believe that we should be keeping people accountable for the promises that they make and failing to deliver on them.”

    To add insult to injury, at least one former employee claimed on Twitter that the severance offer went to their email’s spam folder.

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  • Two months after mass Twitter layoffs, affected employees still waiting for severance offers | CNN Business

    Two months after mass Twitter layoffs, affected employees still waiting for severance offers | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Two months after Elon Musk laid off half of Twitter’s workforce, some employees affected say they have yet to receive any formal severance offer or separation agreement.

    One former Twitter employee told CNN that they had expected to receive some information from the company by Wednesday, the last official employment date for many workers affected by the first wave of layoffs under Musk based on state and federal notice period regulations.

    As of early Thursday, however, the former employee said they had yet to receive any documents related to a severance agreement or offer. Other laid-off employees tweeted similar remarks this week, including one who said they had “never even seen a severance letter let alone been offered severance.”

    A spokesperson for Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney representing hundreds of former Twitter employees, confirmed that her clients who were hit by the Twitter layoffs in early November also had yet to receive any severance information as of Thursday. “There was some anticipation that they would be sent yesterday, but we haven’t seen that,” Kevin Ready, the spokesperson, said of the severance agreements.

    “Yesterday was the official separation date for thousands of Twitter employees, and after months of chaos and uncertainty created by Elon Musk, these workers remain in the lurch,” Liss-Riordan said in a Thursday statement.

    The employee concerns come as Musk scrambles to cut costs at the company he bought in October for $44 billion, including a significant amount of debt. After laying off half the company in early November, Musk continued cutting and pushing out additional employees, including by requiring anyone who remained to sign a pledge committing to “hardcore” work.

    The company was recently sued by a commercial landlord and a private flight company alleging Twitter has failed to pay bills. And The New York Times last month reported that Twitter was considering denying laid off employees their severance as a cost-cutting measure, citing people familiar with the talks among company leadership, adding to the sense of uncertainty for affected workers.

    Twitter, which cut much of its public relations department as part of the layoffs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the claims it has not offered or paid any severance. At the time of the layoffs, Musk promised that “everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance,” a time period that appears to include the 60-days advanced notice Twitter was obligated to provide.

    A report by Fortune on Thursday afternoon, citing an unnamed source familiar with the situation and screenshots viewed by the publication, said that Twitter planned to send severance agreements to affected employees on Thursday, although it was unclear exactly when they would go out. The severance agreements were set to provide laid off US employees with one month’s base pay and would include a provision requiring employees to waive participation in pending lawsuits against the company, according to the report.

    Liss-Riordan has filed four proposed class action lawsuits against Twitter on behalf of employees affected by layoffs, with claims including that Twitter backtracked on promises to allow remote work and consistent severance benefits, as well as complaints related to alleged disability and gender-based discrimination. She has also filed three claims against Twitter with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of former employees. Liss-Riordan said Thursday that she has also filed another 100 demands for arbitration against Twitter on behalf of former employees, after filing an initial 100 last month.

    Last month, the employees represented by Liss-Riordan scored an early win in court when a judge ordered Twitter to inform laid-off employees of the pending lawsuits before asking them to sign any separation agreements that include a release of legal claims.

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  • Twitter Africa employees accuse Elon Musk of discrimination over severance terms | CNN Business

    Twitter Africa employees accuse Elon Musk of discrimination over severance terms | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    Laid-off employees at Twitter’s Africa headquarters are accusing Twitter of “deliberately and recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana” and trying to “silence and intimidate” them after they were fired.

    The team has hired a lawyer and sent a letter to the company demanding it comply with the West African nation’s labor laws, provide them with additional severance pay and other relevant benefits, in line with what other Twitter employees will receive.

    They have also petitioned the Ghanaian government to compel Twitter to “adhere to the laws of Ghana on redundancy and offer the employees a fair and just negotiation and redundancy pay,” according to a letter to the country’s Chief Labour Officer obtained by CNN.

    “It is clear that Twitter, Inc. under Mr Elon Musk is either deliberately or recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana, is operating in bad faith and in a manner that seeks to silence and intimidate former employees into accepting any terms unilaterally thrown at them,” the letter states.

    Twitter laid off all but one of the African employees just four days after the company opened a physical office in the capital Accra following Musk’s takeover. But the staff of about a dozen were not offered severance pay, which they say is required by Ghana’s labor laws, based on their employment contracts. They also claim they were not informed about the next steps — unlike employees in the United States and Europe — until a day after CNN reported on their situation.

    CNN contacted Twitter for comment but received no response.

    In the letter to Twitter Ghana Ltd, obtained by CNN, the African employees rejected a “Ghana Mutual Separation Agreement” from Twitter, which they say was sent to their personal emails offering final pay that the company claims to have been arrived at after a negotiation.

    Several members of the team and their lawyer told CNN that there was no such negotiation on severance pay. They claim it was below what is required by law and contradicts what Musk tweeted that departing employees would receive.

    “Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required,” Musk tweeted. Twitter informed the Ghana-based employees in early November that they would be paid until their last day of employment — December 4. And they will continue to receive full pay and benefits during the 30-day notice period.

    “It was very vague, did not talk about outstanding leave or paid time off, and just asked us to sign if we agree. I never bothered to go back to the document because it is rubbish and is still in violation of labor laws here,” one former employee told CNN on condition of anonymity.

    The Accra-based team accuses Twitter of dealing with them in bad faith, not being transparent, and discriminating against them compared to laid-off employees in other jurisdictions.

    “The employees are distressed, humiliated, and intimidated by this turn of events. There are non-Ghanaian employees, some with young families, who moved here to take up jobs and have now been left unceremoniously in the lurch, with no provision for repatriation expenses and no way to communicate with Twitter, Inc. and discuss or plead their case,” the notice to Ghana’s Chief Labour Officer says.

    Their attorney, Carla Olympio, says the sudden termination of almost the whole team violated Ghanaian employment law because it is considered a “redundancy” which requires three-month notice to authorities and a negotiation on redundancy pay.

    “In stark contrast to internal company assurances given to Twitter employees worldwide prior to the takeover, it seems that little attempt was made to comply with Ghana’s labor laws, and the protections enshrined therein for workers in circumstances where companies are undertaking mass layoffs due to a restructuring or reorganization,” she wrote in a statement to CNN.

    The employees said in their appeal to Ghana’s Chief Labour Officer that Twitter’s formal entry into the continent started with “great fanfare and with the support of the government,” and they expect similar attention to their plight now.

    They are demanding 3 months’ gross salary as severance pay, repatriation expenses for non-Ghanaian staff, vesting of stock options provided in their contracts, and other benefits such as healthcare continuation that were offered to staff worldwide.

    CNN has reached out to Ghana’s Employment and Labor Relations ministry for comment.

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  • Laid-off Twitter Africa team ‘ghosted’ without severance pay or benefits, former employees say | CNN Business

    Laid-off Twitter Africa team ‘ghosted’ without severance pay or benefits, former employees say | CNN Business

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    Nairobi, Kenya
    CNN
     — 

    Former employees of Twitter Africa who were laid off as part of a global cost-cutting measure after Elon Musk’s acquisition have not received any severance pay more than seven months since leaving the company, several sources told CNN.

    In late May, the former employees, who were based in the Ghanaian capital Accra, accepted Twitter’s

    (TWTR)     offer to pay them three months worth of severance, the cost of repatriating foreign staff and legal expenses incurred during negotiations with the company, but they have not received the money or any further communication, the sources said.

    “They literally ghosted us,” one former Twitter Africa employee told CNN.

    “Although Twitter has eventually settled former staff in other locations, Africa staff have still been left in the lurch despite us eventually agreeing to specific negotiated terms.”

    The former employees say they reluctantly agreed to the severance package without benefits, even though it was less than what colleagues elsewhere received.

    “Twitter was non-responsive until we agreed to the three months because we were all so stressed and exhausted and tired of the uncertainty, reluctant to take on the extra burdens of a court case so we felt we had no choice but to settle,” another former employee told CNN.

    The former employees spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity because they said they were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements as part of their exit terms.

    According to Carla Olympio, an attorney who is representing the former employees, the last communication from Twitter or its lawyers was in May, shortly after settlement was agreed.

    CNN reached out to Twitter for comment on the status of the severance package for the former employees in the Ghana office but received an automated response – a poop emoji. It’s unclear whether Twitter still has a media relations department.

    In March, Musk tweeted that Twitter would respond to all press inquiries with the poop emoji. He completed a deal to buy the social media platform in October.

    CNN also asked Ghana’s Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations for comment. A spokesperson said they are investigating the claims.

    Whether Ghanaian authorities can compel Twitter to comply with the settlement is uncertain. The former employees and their attorney say the offer was never finalized.

    The dozen or so team members were laid off just four days after the social network opened a physical office in Accra last November.

    Some of them said they had moved to Ghana from other African nations, and depended on their jobs at Twitter to support their legal status in the country.

    “Unfortunately, it appears that after having unethically implemented their terminations in violation of their own promises and Ghana’s laws, dragging the negotiation process out for over half a year, now that we have come to the point of almost settlement, there has been complete silence from them for several weeks,” Olympio said.

    Twitter and Musk face multiple lawsuits where plaintiffs are claiming the company has failed to pay former staffers what they are owed.

    Last week, a former US employee filed a proposed class action lawsuit claiming the company didn’t pay the full amount of severance benefits it promised last November prior to mass layoffs.

    The plaintiff said Twitter promised senior employees severance of six months of base pay plus one week for every year of service, in addition to other benefits. Instead, the plaintiff said they received a total of three months of pay, according to the lawsuit. In response to a request for comment on the lawsuit, Twitter sent CNN an automated poop emoji.

    In April, Musk told the BBC more than 6,000 people had been laid off since he completed his acquisition of the company in late October.

    “We’re exploring our options with respect to causes of action against Twitter in various jurisdictions including Ghana,” Olympio told CNN.

    Twitter did not open negotiations with the African team until after CNN reported in November that they had been offered separation terms that differed from those offered to departing staff in Europe and North America.

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