Twitter’s legal troubles are mounting. A group of former contract workers for the company recently filed a proposed class action lawsuit accusing it of illegally laying them off without notice. Moreover, in a separate proposed class action, four Twitter vendors have alleged that the social media giant failed to overdue bills.
Filed in San Francisco federal court, the first lawsuit comes from former Twitter contract workers employed by Maryland-based staffing firm TEKsystems, Reuters reports. It alleges that the social media company fired workers without a prior 60-day notice mandated by US and California law. Twitter laid off several thousand contractual staff in mid-November last year, shortly after it fired more than half of its employees.
The other new lawsuit comes from a group of Twitter vendors. It accuses the company of failing to pay overdue bills ranging from around $40,000 to $140,000. According to a CNN report, captioning services company White Coat Captioning, consulting group YES Consulting and public relations firms Cancomm and Dialogue México filed this lawsuit in California Northern District Court. The overdue bills are for services these firms provided to Twitter last year.
Twitter already has several other lawsuits against it
These are just two of several such lawsuits against Twitter. At least five other cases against the company over last year’s mass layoffs are pending in San Francisco federal court. These include one that alleges Twitter CEO Elon Musk of gender discrimination. The firm is accused to have fired disproportionately more female employees than male employees. Attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan represents the plaintiffs in all of these cases.
“While Elon Musk seems to think he’s saving the company money by avoiding these obligations, we plan to show him that not meeting his responsibilities can be a lot more costly,” Liss-Riordan said in an emailed statement to Reuters. She has also filed complaints in private arbitration on behalf of more than 1,700 former Twitter employees and contractors. Workers employed by TEKsystems reportedly did not sign agreements to arbitrate legal disputes. Liss-Riordan also represents ex-Twitter workers who have filed complaints against the company with a US labor board.
In addition to these, Twitter reportedly also faces lawsuits from at least one landlord over unpaid rent, a private jet company for unpaid bills for executive flights, and an event production company for canceling a scheduled conference in November last year and leaving without paying the due bill. “Elon Musk told Twitter vendors that, if they want to get paid, then sue. Well, he’s now getting his wish,” Liss-Riordan told CNN. “Businesses, like employees, should not have to sue to get paid what they are owed.”
2023-04-06 15:06:19