To compensate for the drastic cuts in the payroll of TwitterElon Musk asked the employees who remained to work more, for fewer benefits.
It must be recognized that the saga surrounding the takeover of Twitter has the merit of transparency. How could it have been otherwise, since its new owner was already not known for being silent on subjects he does not master? Today, his new employees most often learn of his decisions and the company’s strategic directions on Twitter, at the same time as everyone else.
Recoup your costs as soon as possible
It’s no secret that since the takeover of Twitter by the South African billionaire, the financial situation of the platform has gone from worrying to potentially catastrophic for its new owner. Advertisers, cautious when announcing the takeover, are now fleeing the social network en masse. No problem, since their replacement is already ready: the famous certification at 8 dollars per month which, in the long term, will represent half of the company’s income according to its new boss. That’s only ever more than 20 million people to convince if we take 2021 revenue as a benchmark, or nearly one in 10 active users.
To address this problem, Musk pulled another game-changing idea out of his hat: lay off half of the company’s workforce by email and on questionable criteria. Their positions will be filled by those who remain, who will therefore have to work twice as much. To make this smooth plan work, Musk gives them no choice. It has already imposed the 40-hour working week and abolished certain benefits in kind such as additional rest days. Finally, Musk remains an old-fashioned boss, who does not imagine letting his employees telecommute from home.
He gives us the secret to becoming a billionaire. Employees hate him!
Musk is frankly not a fan of what may look like an improvement in the living conditions of workers: at the first warning signs, he does everything to make them disappear. This widely proven technique was not born out of the financial situation of his new business. This is indeed the way to do business when your name is Elon Musk. He had already proven this during the first confinement linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, when he left his Californian Tesla factory open despite the restrictions and prohibited telework to his employees whose presence on site was not however required. .
The businessman, to his credit, has never made a secret of his opinions on labor law. In 2019, he illegally fired an employee who was trying to form a union at one of his factories. And last May, he also criticized American workers who he said were much lazier than their Chinese counterparts. The differences in culture, salary, and especially worker protection do not seem to him to be relevant to explain the differences in profitability between the different sites of his company. You can trust him, he’s a billionaire.
Source : Bloomberg, New York Times, The Guardian
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