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 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 the lawsuit, told Bloomberg.
Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by Bloomberg.
The filing comes as employees received an alert notifying them of the “unfortunate” moves.
The internal email, obtained by the Washington Post, warned employees that the terminations would kick off Friday as Musk’s takeover of the company continues to shake its workplace culture.
It coldly states that staffers would receive an email with the subject line: “Your Role at Twitter.”
The email also informed them that all offices would be closed.
Some Twitter employees also reported being blocked from their company Slack and email accounts late Thursday, Business Insider reported.
“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” the email said.
“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.”
As the ominous missive arrived in inboxes, staffers began saying their farewells, sharing salute and heart emojis in their Slack channels, The New York Times said.
The email comes just days after Musk ordered his new employees to “work 24/7” to overhaul Twitter’s verification process, which he also plans to unveil by Friday.
Verified users will have to pay $8 per month to keep their blue check under his controversial “Twitter Blue” subscription plan.
Twitter staffers have set up support groups online and published layoff guides for those facing the axe.
“Honestly happy to be laid off, but the veil of Elon Musk is pierced,” one employee wrote, the BBC reported.
Others complained that they were abruptly booted from company platforms.
“This morning I lost access to my Twitter systems without warning, meaning I’m part of the 50% of workforce layoffs from a role I absolutely adored,” one staffer said.
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Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who filed Thursday’s complaint, sued Tesla over similar claims when the electric-car maker laid off about 10% of its workforce – before the company won a ruling from a federal judge in Austin forcing the workers to pursue their claims in closed-door arbitration instead of in open court, according to Bloomberg.
In June, Musk described the Tesla lawsuit as “trivial” during a discussion with Bloomberg Editor-In-Chief John Micklethwait.
Speaking about the lawsuit against Twitter, Liss-Riordan told Bloomberg that it the world’s richest man is “repeating the same playbook of what he did at Tesla.”
“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.