Twitter owner Elon Musk is reportedly planning to slash half the workforce at the company. This massive layoff is said to begin today. But it’s already facing a legal challenge. According to Bloomberg, Twitter employees have sued the company for the mass layoffs. A class-action lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court Thursday alleges the social network of violating federal and California law by firing employees without proper notice.
Twitter sued by employees for mass layoffs
The lawsuit argues that Twitter’s actions are a violation of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN). The Act requires large companies with more than 100 employees to notify them at least 60 days in advance before these kinds of mass layoffs. With more than 7,000 employees, Twitter is too big a company to get rid of half its workforce without obeying the WARN Act.
According to the new report, the lawsuit is seeking a court order requiring Twitter to obey the WARN Act. It also wants the court to restrict the social network “from soliciting employees to sign documents that could give up their right to participate in litigation”. Musk has reportedly already set tight deadlines for employees to complete some tasks, including a revamp of the verification system.
“We filed this lawsuit tonight in an attempt the make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who filed the complaint on behalf of Twitter employees.
Elon Musk did something similar at Tesla as well
This is not the first time a company owned by Elon Musk has been drawn to the courtroom over violation of the WARN Act. In June this year, Musk’s EV (electric vehicle) company Tesla also faced a similar complaint after letting go of about ten percent of the workforce. Liss-Riordan filed that complaint too. A federal judge in Austin ordered Tesla employees to pursue their claims in closed-door arbitration instead of in open court. Musk later described that lawsuit as “trivial”.
It will now be interesting to see what comes out of the latest case should Musk proceed with his plans of firing thousands of Twitter employees without proper notice. “We will now see if he is going to continue to thumb his nose at the laws of this country that protect employees,” said Liss-Riordan of the world’s richest person. “It appears that he’s repeating the same playbook of what he did at Tesla.”
2022-11-04 15:05:49