I'd be rather careful with that, and not just proclaim these people were terminated. I see a rather good chance court could rule very differently.
Perhaps you're not arguing termination vs resignation but rather whether they're entitled to unemployment and wrongful termination protection? That's more open for debate, but the former employees are entitled to those considerations (which they would not be had they resigned).
Likely that contract doesn't have a clause that states it only remains valid if the employee clicks on "yes" in death march emails.
So, the contract remains valid until either the employee quits or the employer terminates. Not reacting to an email is not quitting.
I'm pretty sure that legally, the employees that received that email and didn't click/answer are still considered employees. They are only terminated once they received their actual termination papers, not an "if / then" email.
In the USA? Not unless you're an executive (or an actual contractor).
(With that said, "Not reacting to an email is not quitting" is still a true statement)
Mind blown.
I've had jobs where I kept the software running so smoothly 80% of my time at work was spent with a broom or a rag cleaning because "downtime" was not a thing.
This is in fact a big reason that companies like to use so many contractors: it’s way easier to manage the downside risk for a contractor because the employer’s liability is scoped entirely to one written agreement. Whereas their relationship with employees is scoped to the broad set of laws and precedents mentioned in my first paragraph.
Since most states are at will employment, you don’t need a reason to fire someone, just like an employee doesn’t need a reason to quit. Both parties can end employment without cause at any time for any reason. There are some varying exceptions to this, but it’s mostly the case.
Obviously employees all (maybe almost all) have employment contracts
"You work for us, we pay you (salary amount) and you will do everything we ask you to and thanks to 'right to work' laws we can fire you at anytime for any or no reason"
2. "Right to work" laws deal with union membership. You're thinking of "at-will employment" laws.
Quitting is a process you do, you give a letter, or you tell your boss, or you stop showing up to work, anything else is termination
But I gotta say, I really hope someone will speak to journalists about what that was about.
Besides, unemployment is one thing that is usually very liberally decided in the employee's favor, given that you are effectively paying for it.
https://www.ppic.org/blog/whos-leaving-california-and-whos-m...
There is a lot of tailwind for California's economy. If I were starting a new company, I would stay away from California. Every possible metric is worse except for network effects and access to capital in SV.
Probably because they are no longer competitive to afford them. If you want to argue that there needs to be a more compassionate, less capitalist competition to California then I'll walk back my argument as I would agree that there are tradeoffs there. If you were discussing there needing "to be some competition to California model" and referencing capitalistic model then I will still point to the fact that gdp per capita puts California as the best subnational polity
>Every possible metric is worse except for network effects and access to capital in SV.
Again if you meant to compare this to a non capitalistic market then you have a point, but if this is capitalism vs capitalism that's like saying "if you just remove all the ways they are winning, aren't they actually losing?"
Many stably employed people would answer "no" to that question (if they could be honest) and kept working.
I don't really see the "constructive dismissal" argument either that others brought up, as that would require the employer deliberately creating a hostile work environment. Just saying "we're going into hardcore mode" and taking away some perks that weren't guaranteed wouldn't yet fulfill that. There might be of course other shit that twitter/Musk pulled/pulls that may legally satisfy a constructive dismissal. The email, in my laypersons view, wouldn't be enough.
However there is a strong point about the "missed the email" argument, and the non-affirmative nature of the "resignations" it creates. I think that's a rather strong point in favor of the employees. But then again, never underestimate courts ability to render "surprising" rulings.
My guess is though that twitter would not just "dismiss" everybody who did not respond. At the very least HR would get in touch with those people anyway, at which point employees can say "oh wait, what email?". I'd think the email is just meant as a pre-filter to save time by filtering out what people you do not need to talk to because they want to stay anyway.