Wage theft and fraud are crimes that state attorneys general do prosecute.

https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-f...

No, they should be imprisoned for misleading, by defrauding. The "goodwill" was promised, in legal documents, and not fulfilled, that same goodwill is a major leverage against the employee, if such a promise was made you will take life decisions differently than if there was no such promise, when that promise is broken and your life is affected (as in: you'd move somewhere else and try a different venture, now you can't because you need to look for a job right now) then it's a fraud and a billionaire should really suffer just due to the power imbalance in the equation.

The fact that you are defending this practice makes me almost want to ask you how do their boots taste like...

It may not be owed but it was promised, presumably in legally enforceable documents that would have been used if the former employees broke the terms of severance.

Why do you keep posting stuff like this, when people are very clearly not arguing this?

Nobody believes that executives should be jailed for not offering severance - that's not what is being discussed. But if part of a termination agreement includes a guarantee of severance (and these termination agreements basically always include responsibilities for the employee to uphold in order to receive that sentence), and then you just decide not to pay it, and it looks like you basically never had the intent to pay it, that looks a lot more like fraud.

The purchase contract had language in that that current twitter employees would be paid out severance via the then current twitter standards. He signed said contract.

He also publicly promised severance to all employees he laid off, when laying them off, then tried to back out of it after the fact.

So we have both contract law and public statements that he owes severance to thousands of people, and now is just refusing to pay. What kind of behavior is that?

You're responding to something not in the parent comment.

"Protect the vulnerable" there probably means enforcing contractual obligations to pay severance that was promised, not to offer severance in the first place.

Elon? Is that you?