Kanye West has been hit with a lawsuit from a former project manager and property caretaker Tony Saxon who said he was fired unceremoniously without being paid his dues.
Tony Saxon said Kanye fired him after he refused to remove electricity and windows from the rapper’s Malibu home to create a retro bomb shelter.
According to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the project manager argued that Kanye’s demands amounted to violations of multiple labour codes, including dangerous working conditions.
He also cited unpaid wages and wrongful retaliatory termination in his suit.
According to the lawsuit, Kanye ordered Saxon to move large generators into the home. But when the project manager refused, the rapper told him to “get the hell out”.
Kanye also reportedly said that Saxon would be “considered an enemy if he did not comply”.
“When Plaintiff refused to engage in unlawful conduct or to engage in activity that would further cause him physical injury, Mr Ye responded: ‘If you don’t do what I say, you’re not going to work for me, I’m not gonna be your friend anymore and you’ll just see me on TV’,” the suit reads.
After working for the rapper for two months, Kanye reportedly fired Saxon on 5 November 2021 for not “complying” with the requests.
The rapper also allegedly promised to pay Saxon $20,000 per week. However, according to the lawsuit, Kanye only made two payments: one to cover Saxon’s weekly salary and another for the project’s budget.
“Ye has shown a reckless disregard toward his employees and has flouted the law in unbelievably dangerous ways throughout this entire project at the Malibu house.
“He continues his pattern of not paying his bills while treating workers terribly. No employee should have to suffer through the sort of working conditions Mr Saxon was forced to endure, yet Ye showed no concern and merely wanted the work done, despite the hazardous and unsafe, not to mention illegal, actions he was trying to force the plaintiff to undertake,” Saxon’s lawyer Ron Zambrano said in a statement.
