The new boss Elon Musk is serious and takes a clear cut on Twitter. The first employees are already losing their IT access, including a heavily pregnant mother. A group of ex-employees are fighting back and filing a class action lawsuit.
Offices closed, system access blocked – thousands of employees on Twitter fear for their jobs. Mass layoffs imminent following takeover by billionaire Elon Musk. The social media group announced that it would inform the workforce by e-mail by Friday, 5 p.m. Central European Time, who had to go and who could stay. “In an effort to put Twitter on a healthy path, we will undertake the difficult process of downsizing the global workforce,” the email, seen by Reuters, said. According to US media, about half of the 7,500 employees will lose their jobs.
Some employees wrote on their Twitter accounts that their access to IT was already blocked – a sign that they will probably lose their jobs. “Looks like I’m unemployed. I just got logged out of my work laptop and removed from Slack,” wrote a user who describes himself as a former senior community manager at Twitter.
A heavily pregnant Twitter employee also said that access to her work laptop was disabled a few hours after the announcement. The woman, who is eight months pregnant and already has a nine-month-old, shared a picture of herself on Twitter: “Last Thursday at the SF [San Francisco] office was truly the last day Twitter was Twitter.” , she wrote.
Employees shouldn’t even show up at the office on Friday. “If you’re in or on your way to the office, please go home,” the email said. Anyone who is allowed to stay will be informed via their official e-mail address. Those who have to leave will receive instructions on the next steps via their private email address. Until then, the offices would remain closed and all access cards would be deactivated “to ensure the security of all employees, the Twitter systems and customer data,” it said.
A group of five employees who have already been fired are fighting back: They filed a class action lawsuit against Twitter. The company did not give them 60 days notice before they were fired, as required by California and US law. The five refer to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (Warn) Act, which requires timely termination in the event of mass layoffs or plant closures.
The announcement did not come as a complete surprise to Twitter employees. Musk took over Twitter at the end of October after months of wrangling for $44 billion (around €44 billion) and immediately fired the head of the short message service, Parag Agrawal, and other key managers. Shortly before the takeover, the Washington Post quoted Musk as saying that he wanted to reduce the number of employees to 2,000.
Twice during the week meetings for all employees were called, only to be canceled hours later. Employees told Reuters they had to gather information themselves from the media, anonymous Internet forums and private chat groups.
