Elon Musk faces a lawsuit attempting to stop him firing half the workers at his newly-acquired Twitter, according to reports on Friday.
All of Twitter’s estimated workforce of 7,000 were awaiting their fate as the billionaire prepared to wield the axe, but a class-action lawsuit was filed on Thursday in San Francisco federal court, arguing that the company is violating federal and California law by not giving enough notice.
The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act restricts large companies from mounting mass layoffs without at least 60 days of advance notice.
The lawsuit asks the court to issue an order requiring Twitter to obey the WARN Act, and restricting the company from soliciting employees to sign documents that could give up their right to participate in litigation.
“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,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who filed Thursday’s complaint, said told Bloomberg.
Employees were set to receive an email on Friday in Musk’s own version of Russian roulette – those lucky enough to keep their jobs would be notified via their work account, those shown the metaphorical door receiving notice through their personal email, according to multiple media reports on Friday.
The email to Twitter’s approximately 7,000 employees stated that its offices would be temporarily closed and all badge access suspended in order “to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data”.
Employees that have been sacked have already started sharing stories of being locked out of their company laptops.
Musk fired several Twitter executives immediately upon taking control of the company last week, including chief executive, Parag Agrawal, finance chief, Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief, Vijaya Gadde.
The scorched-earth job cutting Musk’s is part of a desperate attempt by Musk to turn a profit at the platform for which he, by his own admission overpaid $44bn.
Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com
