Last week, Elon Musk began his first few days at Twitter by firing several of the company’s employees. Now, the social media giant is asking for some of those laid-off workers to come back, following backlash and a lawsuit.
Being sued is nothing new for Musk, considering his other company, Tesla, was hit by a similar lawsuit earlier this year.
Employees up in arms
The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco federal court on Thursday, with five former or current Twitter employees coming together to voice their disdain, Bloomberg reported. Among them was software engineer Emmanuel Cornet, who made satirical cartoons targeting Silicon Valley.
Cornet was fired on Nov. 1, according to the lawsuit. At the same time, three other employees, who alleged that they were not provided proper notice, had their work email accounts locked out, and were unable to log into their work laptops.
According to the lawsuit, the decision to fire the employees violated the U.S. Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), which requires companies with 100 or more employees to give 60 days notice to workers before they implement layoffs of 50 or more people.
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“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 filing stated.
After Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter, the company notified employees on Thursday evening that it would be sending them email messages, notifying them whether their position was impacted.
Those who were safe received an email on their company email, while those who would lose their jobs would get them via their personal email, the Washington Post wrote. Around 3,700 employees — about half of Twitter’s workforce — were laid off.
Musk hopes to make Twitter more profitable by initiating several controversial moves, including the mass layoffs. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, finance chief Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief, Vijaya Gadde, were among the people fired by Musk after he took ownership.
Other moves include monetizing the “blue tick” verification system by charging $8 a month for anyone who wishes to get a tick. Musk also ordered the company to find up to $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The case brings echoes of another lawsuit filed by former employees of Tesla, which also claimed that Musk violated the WARN Act as well. More than 500 employees were let go from Tesla’s Nevada factory.
READ MORE:
- Twitter to Delay Badge Changes Until After US Midterm Elections: NYT
- Musk Blames Activists for Twitter’s Plummeting Revenue
- Musk Orders Twitter to Cut Infrastructure Costs by $1 Billion -Sources
Turning things around
In lieu of Musk’s criss-crossing decisions, Twitter decided to invite dozens of the fired employees back on Nov. 6, Bloomberg reported.
Apparently, some of the layoffs were made by accident, while others were let go before management could realize that the employees were needed to help bring Musk’s vision of Twitter to fruition.
“Sorry to @- everybody on the weekend but I wanted to pass along that we have the opportunity to ask folks that were left off if they will come back. I need to put together names and rationales by 4PM PST Sunday,” former employees read on Twitter’s Slack channel on Saturday.
