It’s been a very busy day for Twitter. Today morning it was confirmed that about 50% of the employees in the company would be fired without notice. Said and done, more than three thousand workers can no longer work in the company’s offices. In response, Twitter and Elon Musk have been sued.
According to Bloomberg, approximately 3,700 employees have lost their jobs. In response, Twitter is being sued for failing to give sufficient notice of the layoffs, as it is said that violates federal and California laws. Additionally, advertisers are starting to pause spending as the situation unfolds. This was what the company said about it:
“In an effort to put Twitter on a healthy path, on Friday we will go through the difficult process of downsizing our global workforce.
We recognize that this will affect a number of people who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but unfortunately this action is necessary to ensure the company’s future success.
We recognize that this is an incredibly challenging experience, whether or not you are affected. Thank you for continuing to adhere to Twitter’s policies that prohibit you from discussing sensitive company information on social media, with the press, or anywhere else.”
For her part, Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who filed a California class action lawsuit against Twitter, revealed that some employees will receive severance pay for two months. This was what he commented:
“It appears that employees are getting their notices and at least some will be paid through January 4. I am pleased that Elon Musk has learned something from the lawsuit we filed against him at Tesla and is making an effort to comply with the WARN Act. We filed this case pre-emptively to make sure that violation did not happen again.”
Along with these, companies such as Volkswagen AG, Pfizer Inc., and General Mills inc, have suspended spending on Twitter, something that Elon Musk points out as a decision caused by “pressure from activist groups”, something that so far has not been confirmed. This is what he pointed out:
“Twitter has seen a massive drop in revenue as activist groups put pressure on advertisers, though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did our best to appease activists. Extremely messy! They are trying to destroy free speech in America.”
Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressing advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.
Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022
At the moment it is unknown how the company will react to this demand, or if we will see more legal responses from employees in the coming days. On related topics, Elon Musk seeks to revive an old social network.
Editor’s note:
Elon Musk’s leadership on Twitter has started off on the wrong foot, and a big one. It seems that nobody is happy with the decisions of the director of Tesla, and considering that important people from key areas of the company have been fired, the community has begun to worry.
Via: Bloomberg