Twitter Employees Sue Company Amid Layoffs and Restructuring
Twitter may have violated labor laws by firing employees without warning.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has only been officially in charge of social media platform Twitter for one week, but for its employees, it’s been an absolute whirlwind of changes. One of Musk’s first actions after taking control of the platform was to fire its entire executive board, leaving him as the company’s sole authority. Following that, in an effort to save money and restructure the company to his tastes, Musk has begun widespread layoffs within Twitter corporate.
According to Twitter employees that have been posting on the platform this week, many of them were suddenly locked out of their workstations and kicked from the company Slack chat without warning. Shortly afterward, they received word that they had been laid off.
A coalition of now-former Twitter employees have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company on the grounds that it has violated California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, also known as the WARN Act. This legislation stipulates that any company employing over 100 people must provide, at minimum, a two-month notice before any widespread layoff events that affect at least 50 employees.
Twitter is being sued in a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company — now headed by Elon Musk — violated federal and state law that requires 60 days' notice of mass layoffs, according to a court document. https://t.co/tKP2F8G7Nj
— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 4, 2022
“Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has made clear that he believes complying with federal labor laws is ‘trivial,’” Attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan said in a statement to CNN. “We have filed this federal complaint to ensure that Twitter be held accountable to our laws and to prevent Twitter employees from unknowingly signing away their rights.”
The precise number of employees that have been laid off from Twitter has not been divulged, though Musk has publicly floated the notion of firing up to 50% of its workforce to aid the company’s bottom line (as well as the sizable debt he incurred in purchasing it).