Fyre Festival’s, organizer and promoter, Billy McFarland, has stated that the employees at this festival will be unable to get paid but they won’t be fired. They are welcomed to stay and work for no payment.
According to FactMag, McFarland stated, in a conference call acquired by Vice News, “After conferring with our counsel and all financial people, unfortunately we are not able to proceed with payroll. We’re not firing anyone, we’re just letting you know that there will be no payroll in the short term.”
Along with this, the employees recently noticed that their checks, for the previous two weeks, have not been coming. The status of the upcoming checks are uncertain at the current moment.
There has been many concerns from employees such as how this action will obstruct their ability to get unemployment benefits. To this, McFarland states “I’m not aware of how this impacts the employment benefits. The goal is definitely not to put you in a bad position there, so I will need to get some advice on my side and figure out the best way to proceed. If this impacts you, you can email me, and we can figure out what the right way to proceed is, to make sure everybody’s in a good place to collect any benefits.”
Billy McFarland and Ja Rule, McFarland’s cofounder, has been dealing with many lawsuits lately such as the one with EHL Funding and the idea of not getting paid back. These lawsuits include the accusation of selling VIP passes and lack of adequate necessities. There has also been the festival threatening to sue over social media posts.