Twitter employees facing mass layoff have filed a class action lawsuit against the company with the US federal court in San Francisco, alleging that they were not given enough notice as stipulated under federal law that they would be laid off.
On Thursday evening, Twitter employees were informed via a company-wide memo that they will receive a notice by 12 p.m. ET Friday that informs them of their employment status.
“If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email. If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email,” a copy of the memo said.
Though the staff have been in anticipation of mass layoff as soon as Musk’s Twitter acquisition bid got close to reality, their concern hangs on the timeframe of the notice, as Musk had denied earlier reports that he plans to cut 75% of the company’s workforce. Some of the employees said they’d discovered that have been let go on Thursday when they couldn’t access their work accounts.
While the layoff is aimed at half of Twitter’s staff – saving about 25% of the employees who were reportedly on the sack-list earlier, the abrupt notice is believed to have broken a federal law. The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires 60 days’ notice for mass sackings at large employers.
Musk’s layoff plan impacts half of Twitter’s 7,000 employees. Dozens of the affected employees have been noted posting on Twitter that they have been fired.
I was fired from Twitter this morning. I was responsible for the timeline refreshing the second you saw a good tweet
— Adam (@adamgreattweet) November 3, 2022
So far, the class action lawsuit is being pushed by about five Twitter employees who were fired before the notice came on Thursday. One said he was fired on November 1, while three said they were not informed at the time of filing but had been locked out of their email accounts.
As noted by the Guardian, Musk is known for using a similar layoff pattern at Tesla, where the company sought to obtain full release from its obligations under the Warn Act by offering severance of one or two weeks’ pay instead.
“Plaintiffs here are reasonably concerned that, absent court intervention, Twitter will engage in similar behavior and seek releases from laid-off employees without informing them of their rights or the pendency of this case,” the court filing stated
Musk’s move to cut Twitter’s workforce is tied to his efforts to cut the company’s running cost. He started by firing chief executive, Parag Agrawal, the finance chief, Ned Segal, and the legal affairs and policy chief, Vijaya Gadde.
He has also introduced $8 per month pay for the verification blue tick as a means of generating more revenue for Twitter. Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter is believed to be overpriced and he is working to replenish it as soon as possible. Musk has also directed Twitter’s teams to save as much as $1bn in annual infrastructure cost by slashing funding for cloud services and servers.
There is also a report that Musk has found a way to avoid paying sacked Twitter executives their severance packages. That also is expected to lead to another lawsuit which Musk has tried to avoid.
The world’s richest man completed the Twitter deal last Friday to stop the case, which was already taken to court by the company, from going to trial.
