Do fired Cloudflare employees have a legal cause of action?

Silicon Valley started 2024 with a big bang of corporate shakeups. Among mass tech layoffs Cloudflare, a cybersecurity giant, recently started trending on social media channels and making headlines for all the wrong reasons. 

In an avalanche of sudden layoffs, disgruntled employees took to social media to express their frustration. Brittany Pietsch, a mid-market account executive at Cloudflare started a trend when she recorded herself being terminated without a cause and posted the video on TikTok. This video went viral on TikTok, IG, YouTube and LinkedIn, creating a wave of likes, shares and comments, inspiring others to follow suit. A number of fired emplyees consequently flooded the social media telling their personal stories of corporate promise and betrayal, individual investment, and collective disappointment.

Cloudflare leadership claims that these were not layoffs at all, but rather performance reviews. However, terminated employees' social posts paint a different picture. The posts assert that none of the employees were on the Performance Improvement Program (PIP). Some claim to have had an outstanding performance, and that were therefore completley enbushed by this unexpected layoff. Nearly all former employee social media posts assert that they were not given a concrete reason for the termination. All posts share the sentiment of being blindsided by the company. 

Are Cloudflare layoffs a scandal or just the way of doing business in today's at-will Tech world? Legally speaking, in California under California Labor Code 2922, all employment is presumed to be at-will unless you and your employer agree otherwise or an exception to at-will employment applies. There are five main exceptions to at-will employment in California: 1) public policy, 2) implied contracts, 3) discrimination, 4) retaliation, and 5) fraud or misrepresentation.

Do Cloudflare employees have a cause of action here? As with most questions of law, the answer is: it depends. If the employee can invoke one of the above-listed exceptions to at-will employment, they may be successful in bringing forth the action for wrongful termination. That is not to say that the action itself will be successful. Many factors may play into the success or failure of a legal action. If you think you may have a cause of action, please consult with an attorney with expertise in labor law, duly licensed in your state. 

A word of advice: The next time you are in the negotiation stage of the hiring process, discuss the company's severance package policy. As a percautionary meassure, in these turbulent times, it may be prudent to negotiate the terms of severance into your employment contract. Take care of your own individual employee rights, because if you don't no one else will.

Additional consideration: While the internet is cheering the brave young employee who recorded her termination from Cloudflare, we must note that secret recording of any private work conversations is likely illegal. Recording a conversation, such as that with HR, even in cases of termination, without letting all participants in the call know that they are being recorded, likely violates a particular type of personal liberty, resonable expectation of privacy. Privacy is an individual right protected by the United States Constitution as well as Federal and State statutes. If the account executive mentioned above tried to bring forth legal action against the company, the recording would certainly be inadmissible and may create a hurdle in this case.