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The new owner of Twitter Inc. is facing more legal issues since workers who were sacked shortly after Elon Musk took over are still waiting for information regarding their severance compensation months after being fired.
A week after taking over the company, on November 4, Musk let go over half of Twitter’s workforce of over 7,000 people. Nearly 1,000 of those fired lived in California, according to paperwork given to the state. Those workers were required by both state and federal law to continue receiving regular salaries for the prior two months.
On Wednesday, however, the official termination date for California employees, that 60-day period came to an end. According to three people who have been laid off, they still haven’t received any information about further severance or COBRA continuation of health care.
Everyone “was offered 3 months of severance,” Musk tweeted at the time.
The billionaire has hurried to reduce expenses after paying $44 billion for the social media site while issuing a bankruptcy warning. According to Platformer, he cancelled more employee perks earlier this week, such as lunch reimbursements and commuter advantages.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed against Twitter for unpaid expenses related to private chartered jet flights, software services, and office rent in San Francisco.
Hundreds of the Twitter employees Shannon Liss-Riordan is a lawyer for have reportedly already had their last day at work but have not yet received a severance package or pay.
Since many workers had their last official day, we anticipated that those severance agreements would have been mailed out by now, but we have no idea what Elon Musk is doing, Liss-Riordan said. Although we are moving through with our legal actions, we are speculating about what he has planned.
Twitter has requested the San Francisco judge supervising the severance action to dismiss it or, alternatively, to transfer it to Delaware, where Twitter has been involved in litigation for other instances, such as the conflict over his takeover of the business. Twitter contends that, to the extent the lawsuit proceeds, and regardless of where it ultimately ends up in court, its former employees are bound by contracts that mandate they arbitrate any problems with the business behind closed doors rather than in front of a judge.
State labour regulations require employers to continue paying laid-off workers for 90 days after their termination in New York, where Twitter also has a sizable presence.
Some of Twitter’s employees were expecting babies or suffering with other medical conditions at the time of the layoffs, which made it more difficult for them to understand their health coverage.
Twitter’s press email wasn’t immediately answered when a message was sent to it. A public relations department once existed at Twitter.
The Northern District of California’s US District Court is hearing the San Francisco case Cornet v. Twitter, 22-cv-06857 (San Francisco).
