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The guys end the week discussing another well known company making critical labor law violations. The two then answer, "We are going through a rebranding process, what should we look for on the legal side?" For a more in depth analysis of today's question, check out Nasir's blog post. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: This is Matt Staub. NASIR: And welcome to the business law podcast where we cover business legal news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. MATT: After the two debacles earlier in the week, you finally got a good intro. NASIR: I know. MATT: Good job. NASIR: I’ve been practicing. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: It took me three times. MATT: I hope so. Once it gets to the end of the week, I hope you’ll be a lot better. NASIR: Sorry. Next time, you do it. MATT: Well, this isn’t like our last episode which dealt with football but we’re going to talk about… NASIR: Tesla. MATT: SpaceX. NASIR: Oh, we’ve talked about SpaceX. MATT: We’ve talked about him before – Elon Musk. I think last we spoke about him was when he opened up his patents to anyone who wants to infringe upon them. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: Or I guess it wouldn’t be infringement if it’s asked for but… NASIR: Please, infringe on my patents. No, yeah, Elon Musk is definitely a… MATT: Innovator. NASIR: Innovator but also, like, they like to change things and do things differently. MATT: Disruptor. NASIR: Disruptor – that’s the word. MATT: He might rethink that patent strategy after these recent labor lawsuits. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: So, he sued SpaceX, one of his companies here – the private space launch provider, for those of you who don’t know which many people can afford, I think. It’s being sued by former employees. You know, the typical employee lawsuits – weren’t allowed to take breaks, weren’t paid overtime, company failed to give them enough time before a round of lay-offs. This was in California? NASIR: Yeah, we haven’t dealt with it a lot because, when you do lay-off a number of people, there are some extra processes that you have to go through as far as notification and things like that – everything from how you handle the actual benefits package to that effect. Also, California law, I think, requires 60 days’ notice if you’re laying off more than 50 employees up to a certain amount. It’s not something we deal with a lot, obviously, but that was a big issue. I know we covered LinkedIn, was it last Friday? About their labor law violations but I just want to reiterate, once again, a huge company. Well, SpaceX is probably not as big. I mean, they’re kind of new but I know they have a lot of money into it but the point is that a company that should know, obviously they know enough about patent law – at least Elon Musk knows enough about patent law to applying on that. They make these labor law mistakes all the time and, though many of you guys may not be laying off more than 50 people in one day, when it comes to allowing them to take breaks, paying overtime, these things are very common to every business. MATT: Yeah, and they said they laid off 200 to 400 workers last month which I just looked up. At the end of last year, they had about 3,800 employees. NASIR: That’s a good size. MATT: It’s actually a pretty decent chunk but, yeah, like you said, 60 days before lay-offs that involve 50 to 499 employees in California. Should have done that and I guess that’s the moral of the story, right? We talk with smaller businesses all the time. They can definitely make these mistakes but these other companies too that are making the same mistakes, I don’t know if they think they’re immune to it or what the deal is. NASIR: I think it’s just ignorance of the law. You know, picking on the CEO of the company, obviously, these kinds of mistakes are made my middle management. For example, look at this,