Twitter employees have dragged the firm to court over the planned sack of 3,700 staff by the new owner, Elon Musk.
The workers contend that the company is doing this without giving enough notice, thus violating federal and California labour laws.
According to an internal memo sent to Twitter employees, the new management under Elon Musk said it would start conducting layoffs Friday morning.
On Thursday evening, all employees received an email which said they would be informed of their employment status at 9 A.M. PT on Friday. The company explained that “if an employee is keeping their job, they’ll be notified via their work email — if they’re let go, they’ll be notified at a personal address.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act restricts large companies from mounting mass layoffs without at least 60 days of advance notice.
The lawsuit by Twitter employees is asking the court to issue an order requiring Twitter to obey the WARN Act and restrict the company from soliciting employees to sign documents that could give up their right to participate in litigation.
Commenting on the lawsuit in an interview, Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who filed the complaint, said, “We filed this lawsuit tonight in an attempt to make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights.”
Elon Musk completed the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last week, making the hitherto public company become a private one.
One of Musk’s first moves as a Twitter owner was the sacking of Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, and other top executive managers. He later dissolved the board of Twitter as he assumed the role of CEO.
Aside from his plan to sack half of the company’s staff to cut costs, Musk has also introduced $8 monthly charges for Twitter verification.
