Twitter sued for mass layoffs without giving employees enough notice

Social media platform Twitter has been sued over its plan to eliminate 3,700 jobs, which its employees claim the company is doing without giving them enough notice. A class-action lawsuit was filed in the San Francisco federal court on late Thursday.

The case is Cornet v. Twitter Inc., 22-cv-06857, US District Court, Northern District of California.

The layoffs come just about a week after businessman Elon Musk took over the social media platform and sacked CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and head of legal policy Vijaya Gadde. These are a part of Musk's moves to streamline the company's operations and make Twitter more profitable.

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act protects workers, their families, and communities by requiring most employers with 100 or more employees to notify their staff at least 60 calendar days in advance before plant closings and mass layoffs.

As such, the complaint filed by attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan asks the court to order Twitter to obey the WARN Act and restrict the company from forcing employees to sign documents that could waive their right to participate in litigation.

"We filed this lawsuit tonight in an attempt the [sic] make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights," says Liss-Riordan.

Back in June, Liss-Riordan also represented workers of Musk's electric car company Tesla when the organization laid off 10% of its workforce. The lawsuit seeked pay and benefits for the 60-day notification period. Musk called the lawsuit "trivial" and "pre-emptive".

“We will now see if he is going to continue to thumb his nose at the laws of this country that protect employees,” Liss-Riordan said of Musk. “It appears that he’s repeating the same playbook of what he did at Tesla.”

Twitter has not yet commented on the issue.

Source: Bloomberg (paywall)

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