Peloton CEO John Foley said in an email Tuesday that the 2,800 employees the company has laid off in North America will receive free fitness classes for 12 months as part of their severance package.
The Peloton membership, which typically costs $40 a month, is in addition to more typical layoff measures that include cash severance payments, extended health care coverage and help finding new jobs.
“We are equipping each member of the team leaving Peloton with helpful tools to make them feel as comfortable as possible as they explore their career path after Peloton,” Foley wrote. dropped $55 million on an East Hampton property in December.
Foley, who will remain as CEO after Former Netflix and Spotify CFO Barry McCarthy Takes the Reins as CEO — broke the news in a company-wide email at 5 a.m. Tuesday.
Some teary-eyed employees learned about the layoffs from news articles before they saw Foley’s email, and they spent Tuesday morning scrambling to find out if they were among the 20% of the corporate workforce laid off.
“There are people freaking out right now wondering if they are in the [layoff] list,” a Peloton source told The Post. “Everything has been so secret.”
Laid-off employees will still be able to take classes from their favorite Peloton instructors, who the company says are not affected by Monday’s cost-cutting measures.
“The company’s roster of instructors is critical to the user experience, and Peloton will continue to invest in its content creators for the benefit of its growing and loyal community,” Peloton said in a press release, assuring customers that layoffs “will not affect the Member experience.”
Peloton declined to comment beyond Foley’s note to employees.
Monday is not the first time that Peloton’s corporate employees have felt abandoned in favor of the company’s instructors, some of whom have become near-celebrities and amassed hundreds of thousands of social media followers.
In December Foley hosted an invite-only Christmas party at Manhattan’s posh Plaza Hotel for some of his instructors – even after it rejected a company-wide party as a cost-cutting measure. Foley argued that the champagne-soaked event was a “personal party for our vaccinated family and friends to celebrate everything that’s happened in New York City in the last two years,” but some staffers still resented it.
“All instructors and their chaperones were invited to attend, but there was a company-wide moratorium on hiring and holiday parties,” a Peloton employee complained at the time. “Morale is at an all time low.”
.
