Twitter Inc. was charged over Elon Musk’s plan to cut about 3,700 jobs on the social media platform, which employees say the company is doing without adequate notice in violation of federal and California law.
A class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday in San Francisco federal court.
Twitter plans to cut staff cuts on Friday, the company said in an email to employees. Musk plans to cut half of its workforce, delivering on his plans to cut costs on the platform he bought last month for $44 billion, those in the know have said.
The Federal Worker Adaptation and Retraining Act prohibits large companies from taking mass layoffs without at least 60 days notice.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit asks the court to issue an injunction requiring Twitter to comply with WARN law and restrict the company from asking employees to sign documents that would violate their right to participate in lawsuits. can give up.
“We filed this lawsuit tonight in an effort to make sure employees are aware that they shouldn’t be giving away their rights and that they have a way to pursue their rights,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who led the lawsuit. complaint on Thursday, in a statement. an interview.
Liss-Riordan sued Tesla Inc. in June for similar claims when the electric car maker led by Musk laid off about 10% of its workforce.
Tesla won a ruling from a federal judge in Austin that forced workers in that case to pursue their claims in closed-door arbitration rather than in public court.
Musk described the Tesla lawsuit as “trivial” during a discussion with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait at the Qatar Economic Forum in June.
“We’ll now see if he sticks his nose up at this country’s laws that protect workers,” Liss-Riordan said of Musk. “Looks like he’s repeating the same script he did at Tesla.”
The case is Cornet v. Twitter Inc., 22-cv-06857, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
Photo: Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
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