Twitter: Employees file class action lawsuit over layoffs

Elon Musk has officially been the new head of Twitter for a few days now. It’s not just millions of users of the social network who are annoyed by this. The takeover of the short message service has hit the staff like a tsunami. A few weeks ago, it was considered unlikely that Musk would actually be the new CEO of Twitter, but this fact was revealed to many employees in the first few days. Thus, the Tesla boss did not only dismiss the management team of Twitter. On top of that, he seems to be putting his plan to lay off up to 75 percent of the workforce into action. Now, the first laid-off employees are fighting back in court as part of a class action lawsuit.

Firing by email

Since the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, great fear has apparently broken out internally at the short message service. The wave of layoffs hovers like a sword of Damocles over the heads of the entire workforce. It’s not just the fact that Elon Musk wants to lay off so many employees that has those involved shaking their heads, but also outsiders. The procedure also seems anything but professional. Thus, the employees of the social network have learned on Friday, November 04, 2022 at 5 p.m. via email whether they continue to have their job or throw but dismissed.

Twitter employees do not put up with this and promptly filed a class action lawsuit on the same day. They claim that this violates the Warn Act, which requires that employees be given at least 60 days’ notice if they are to be terminated. Anyone who follows the work of Elon Musk at Tesla will notice parallels. After all, he had mass layoffs carried out at the e-car manufacturer a few months ago and also disregarded the Warn Act in the process. Musk has already had to go to court for this action.

Affected people on Twitter were denied access

The perfidious thing about the whole thing is that many of the terminated employees did not even receive an email. Rather, they learned of their dismissal the moment they tried to gain access to the office. Since the terminated employees’ key cards were no longer authorized, they could not enter it. In addition, in order to avoid being fired, many of Twitter’s workforce are currently working at full speed. In the process, Musk had set deadlines that are almost impossible to meet. For example, the programmers were supposed to redesign the entire subscription model for “Twitter Blue” within a few days.