Twitter Employees SUING Elon Musk For Massive Layoffs
Why are Twitter employees suing Elon Musk?
Multiple Twitter employees have come together to file a class action lawsuit against the company and its new owner, Elon Musk, claiming that firing them would be a violation of labor laws.
Barely one week into the takeover and the SpaceX CEO has already shaken up the company.
He’s bought Tesla engineers into Twitter as advisors and told investors that he plans to fire 75% of Twitter employees, which is three-quarters of the company’s 7500 staff.
That’s a whole lot of disgruntled employees, and there might be strength in numbers. They’ve now banned together.
To fight back, they’re asking the court to issue an order requiring Twitter to follow something called the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires that you have to give advanced notice of at least 60 days for mass layoffs in large companies.
They’re also asking the court to restrict Twitter from forcing them to sign documents that could give up their right to pursue legal action against the company.
Elon is said to begin laying off employees today and has already sent out a companywide email explaining the situation.
Employees were told in an email not to go into the offices. The email said, to place Twitter on a healthy part, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce.
We recognize that this will impact several individuals who contribute to Twitter, but this action is necessary for success.
According to CNN, employees will receive a notice by noon. Today that will let them know whether or not they have been fired.
The email will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended for the safety of employees.
They don’t want any riots to break out, so that’s a smart move. But it wasn’t long before workers began posting on social media about being locked out of their company email accounts.
Many have started posting blue heart emojis in solidarity, as well as the hashtag Love where you worked.
The upheaval wasn’t just limited to Twitter’s US operations. There have been similar sentiments shown around the world.
There’s no other way to put it. People are angry. Workplace morale has reportedly been suffering for months as the chaotic saga of whether Elon will purchase Twitter seemed to drag on forever.
Not only that, but experts in misinformation and civil rights advocates have warned that cutting Twitter’s staff just days before midterm elections in the US.
Could have grave consequences, as the platform has already struggled with content moderation and will now have fewer resources to do that.
But the mass layoffs come as a part of a broader effort from Elon to make the company profitable after he bought it for $44 billion, a price that even he admitted was overpaying.
To complete the deal, he got himself into a messy situation. He put forward a combination of his funding and had to take out multiple loans equaling $13 billion, all of which he is now facing pressure to pay back.
On Thursday, he slashed funding for cloud services and servers to free up $1 billion of their annual infrastructure cost.
He’s also floated several ideas to make a profit at Twitter, including a plan to charge users for verified badges and creating an Everything app that would combine several platforms into one.
But some of his ideas have gotten people into an uproar, especially celebrities because having a blue check next to your name is something of a status symbol for public figures since there are a lot of people looking to impersonate the rich and famous online. So for them, verification is everything.
If someone could just buy it for $20 a month, it would lose all of its value. Legendary horror novelist Stephen King slammed Elon Musk tweeting $20 a month to keep my blue check fat.
They should pay me. If that gets instituted. Elon then responded, saying, we need to pay the bill somehow.
Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8? Not only that but there have also been rumors spreading around the site that Elon plans to charge users for simply watching videos on Twitter.
And to get some much-needed ad revenue, he’s already started backpedaling on his free speech at any cost campaign.
He wrote, Twitter obviously cannot become a free for all healthcare where anything can be said without consequences.
So he knows that he needs to actively crack down on hate speech to avoid alienating both users and advertisers.
It will be a difficult decision for Elon, but eventually, he’s going to realize that Twitter needs to be heavily moderated for it to succeed.
So what do you think about this later story? Do the employees have any chance at all? Let me know in the comments below,
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