This happened at a start up in Seattle this week. I’ve worked for this company for almost 2 years. It was not a secret that money was tight and that there was an ongoing effort by our C-suite to pursue additional investor funds to keep our company afloat.
However that funding apparently dried up this week. Payroll is today, 4/19 and on Monday, 4/17, the CEO called an all hands and asked every employee (100+ employees) to sign a document that stated the last pay period we worked, 4/1 – 4/14, was at a reduced rate (equivalent to $65K/year) so that they could make payroll. He then informed us that everyone was going to be laid off except a small number of people who would be asked to stick around at the reduced rate.
HR sent out a docusign with an employment contract stating the new pay scale and the document was back dated to 4/1.
There was an outpouring of frustrated employees expressing their concerns regarding this slap in the face. I myself wrote one of these outcry emails expressing my displeasure over this move and the fact that it was illegal.
Emergency all hands was called for the next day where the CEO basically said, “whoops, my bad” and informed us that we’d all be paid our normal salaries on payday. Oh and this CEO then decided he couldn’t handle the emotional stress of telling people face to face they were getting laid off so he just left and forced the only C-level that was respected by the employees to have the 100+ lay off conversations solo. What a loser.
Tl;dr: CEO tries illegal shit and then takes it back when called out. Can’t handle his job and ghosts his employees when it’s time for hard conversations.