Breaking: Twitter sued by former staff as Elon Musk begins mass sackings

Twitter is facing a class action lawsuit from former employees who say they were not given enough notice under US federal law that they had lost their jobs, finding out they had been let go when they were locked out of their work accounts on Thursday.

In a company-wide memo, staff were informed on Thursday that they would receive an email to their personal email accounts if they were being fired as part of the mass sackings at the platform in which up to half of the company could go.

Before those emails arrived, dozens of staff began posting on Twitter that they had been fired – after discovering they were no longer able to access their work email accounts or log into their work laptops.

Musk’s plans to cut up to 3,700 staff may hit a roadblock, however, after a lawsuit was filed in the US federal court in San Francisco seeking orders for Twitter to comply with the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires 60 days’ notice for mass sackings at large employers.

The lawsuit, brought on behalf of five Twitter employees so far, says one was fired on 1 November, while three were not informed at the time of filing but had been locked out of their email accounts.

The case cited a similar situation with sackings at Musk’s other company, Tesla, where the company sought to obtain full release from its obligations under the Warn Act by offering severance of one or two weeks’ pay instead.

“Plaintiffs here are reasonably concerned that, absent court intervention, Twitter will engage in similar behaviour and seek releases from laid-off employees without informing them of their rights or the pendency of this case,” the filing stated.

The lawsuit was first reported by Bloomberg.

After finalising the $44bn purchase of Twitter, Musk fired several top Twitter executives, including the chief executive, Parag Agrawal, the finance chief, Ned Segal, and the legal affairs and policy chief, Vijaya Gadde.

The job cuts are part of an overhaul of the social media platform as Musk attempts to make it profitable after his purchase. Musk has also directed Twitter’s teams to free up $1bn in annual infrastructure cost savings by slashing funding for cloud services and servers.

Musk is looking at other ways to make a profit at Twitter, including plans to change the verification “blue tick” system from one that proves someone is who they say they are, to one where people can get a tick only if they pay $8 a month.

Twitter employees shared messages of support with one another on the platform on Thursday, with many using the workplace hashtag #OneTeam. Once staff began noticing they had been locked out of their work accounts, they tweeted with the hashtag #LoveWhereYouWorked.

Musk, meanwhile, tweeted: “I’m an alien trying to get back to my home planet” in response to “what’s the craziest conspiracy theory you think might be true?”

Sola Adeyemo