On Thursday, new details emerged indicating that Elon Musk is expected to cut 3,700 Twitter employees, or over half of the company’s workforce, to reign in Twitter’s costs, according to the Verge.
To prevent sabotage, Twitter has temporarily shut down all of its offices and disabled badge access to all physical locations.
Some employees in the UK said that their computers were “remotely cleaned” while they slept and that they lost access to Slack and Gmail, according to Daily Mail.
Chris Younie, who works for Twitter in entertainment partnerships, tweeted: ‘Well this isn’t looking promising. Can’t log into emails. Mac won’t turn on. But so grateful this is happening at 3am. Really appreciate the thoughtfulness on the timing front guys…’
Well this isn’t looking promising. Can’t log into emails. Mac wont turn on.
But so grateful this is happening at 3am. Really appreciate the thoughtfulness on the timing front guys.
Meanwhile to everyone else at Twitter, you’re the best ❤️ #OneTeam pic.twitter.com/iWyAPeURcm
— Chris Younie (@ChrisYounie) November 4, 2022
It’s expected that half of Twitter’s staff will be let go in a mass email dismissal. The internal message states that employees would be informed of their layoff status via email by 9 AM PST (12 PM EST) on November 4.
An email was sent to its employees on Thursday informing them to “go home and not return to the offices on Friday.”
Below is the full text of the Twitter memo sent to employees:
Team,
In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday. We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.
Given the nature of our distributed workforce and our desire to inform impacted individuals as quickly as possible, communications for this process will take place via email. By 9AM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, everyone will receive an individual email with the subject line: Your Role at Twitter. Please check your email, including your spam folder.
– If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email.
– If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email.
– If you do not receive an email from twitter-hr@ by 5PM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, please email [email protected].
To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended. If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.
We acknowledge this is an incredibly challenging experience to go through, whether or not you are impacted. Thank you for continuing to adhere to Twitter policies that prohibit you from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere.
We are grateful for your contributions to Twitter and for your patience as we move through this process.
Thank you.
In response to the mass layoff of half the Twitter staff, a class-action lawsuit has been filed against Twitter claiming Musk’s layoffs are in violation of California and federal law, which prevents mass layoffs without 60 days’ notice.
New York Post reported:
A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Twitter over Elon Musk’s plan to sack thousands of staffers — as employees were abruptly locked out of their company Slack and email accounts, and barred from going into the office ahead of the mass layoffs Friday.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday in San Francisco federal court after the company notified employees it would eliminate some 3,700 jobs, half its workforce, Bloomberg News reported.
It alleges that employees weren’t given enough notice of the mass layoffs in violation of federal and California law.
It seeks an order requiring the social media platform to obey the WARN Act — the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, a federal law requiring companies with 100 or more workers to give 60 days’ notice of mass layoffs or other work disruptions.
The suit also wants the court to restrict Twitter from soliciting staffers to sign documents that could give up their right to take part in litigation, according to the news outlet.
“We filed this lawsuit tonight in an attempt to 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 the lawsuit, told Bloomberg.
