Twitter is struggling to pay severance pay to hundreds of workers who have been laid off.
Employees of Twitter Inc. were fired shortly after Elon Musk took over are still awaiting details of their severance packages months after being fired, leading to further legal trouble for the new owners.
Musk laid off about 50% of Twitter’s more than 7,000 employees on November 4, just a week after taking control of the company. Nearly 1,000 of those terminated live in California, according to documents filed with the state. Under state and federal law, those workers are required to continue to receive regular wages for the past two months.
But that 60-day period ended on Wednesday, the official termination date of the California employee’s contract. According to the three laid-off workers, employees have yet to hear any details about additional layoffs or continuation of health insurance, known as COBRA.
Musk tweeted at the time that people were “offered for 3 months of severance.”
Since acquiring the social media platform for $44 billion, the billionaire has worked to cut costs, warning that the company could face bankruptcy. Earlier this week, he scrapped other employee benefits, including travel allowance and meal allowance, according to Platformer.
Twitter faces multiple lawsuits over unpaid bills, including private charter flights, software services, and rent at one of its San Francisco offices.
Attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan said hundreds of Twitter employees she represents have now had their last day at the company and received no severance notices or paychecks.
“Nobody received any severance pay,” says Liss-Riordan. Boston-based labor attorney has filed private arbitration and several federal class action lawsuits as well as US labor commission complaints regarding mass terminations. , alleging a combination of retaliation, discrimination, and failure to provide required notice and pay. She said 100 arbitration requests were filed on Thursday, out of 100 pending.
“We don’t know what Elon Musk is up to – we predict that those severance agreements will be sent out by now, because a lot of people already have their last official date,” Liss-Riordan said. “We’re wondering what he’s up to but in the meantime we’re pushing for our legal actions.”
Twitter has asked the San Francisco judge overseeing the severance lawsuit to either remove it or move it to Delaware where Twitter has sued other cases, including a battle over his company’s acquisition. To the extent that the lawsuit remains intact, no matter what it ends up being, Twitter argues that its former employees are bound by contractual agreements that require them to resolve any disputes with the company by arbitration. closed account instead of in open court.
Employees laid off in New York, where Twitter also has a large office, have 90 days for the company to continue paying them, under state labor law.
At the time of the layoffs, several Twitter employees were pregnant or dealing with other medical issues, further complicating the fact that they didn’t understand the coverage well.
“He has to make a decision here: does he really want to get involved in this costly protracted legal battle that will be very, very, very expensive for Twitter or does he want to do the right thing and only care about it?” its mind now?” Liss-Riordan said.
A message sent to Twitter’s press email was not immediately returned. Twitter no longer has a public relations team.
The San Francisco case is Cornet v. Twitter, 22-cv-06857, United States District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
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