this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
104 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22085 readers
98 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
From reading the article, I don't think that this is an accurate description of the situation.
I believe that Twitter employees have been getting a discretionary bonus, so normally Musk would have been fine simply not paying it out, but as part of the acquisition he promised that he/the company would pay it out as it had been in previous years, with some stipulations, etc.
So the issue now is that he promised he would pay it, which means that he's obligated to do it, because the employees made decisions based on that promise that cost/lost them money.
It seems like very simple promissory estoppel.
I'm confused - that's almost exactly what I said, albeit in a very condensed form.
Once you take a Discretionary bonus and then make it into an incentive (i.e. This year the Christmas bonus must be earned by doing X, Y, Z) and adding stipulations to the bonus that are tied to worker output turns it into a non-discretionary bonus.
Promissory Estoppel is the basis for why non-discretionary bonuses are a category. There is a perceived promise of a bonus that people work for, but then are denied which can cause knock-on effects for the people to whom that bonus is owed. A bonus is discretionary up until the point it's used to get people to work longer or perform better.
Sure the general term is Promissory Estoppel, but that's a much weaker regulatory framework than Pay and Labor laws around non-discretionary bonuses.
If there is something else I'm not understanding here please enlighten me further. If it's not "accurate" I invite you to help me be more accurate.