A lawsuit has been filed against microblogging site Twitter against its owner Elon Musk’s plan to remove nearly half of the company’s employees, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
In the suit filed in a San Francisco court, the plaintiffs contended that Twitter was terminating employees without giving notice as required by the law.
An internal email sent to employees on Thursday said that Twitter will “go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce” on Friday in order to place the company on a healthy path, according to Reuters.
“We recognise 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,” the company said.
The company said that the staff will be informed about their employment status at 9 am Pacific Time (9.30 pm Indian Standard Time), Techcrunch reported. Employees who are to be retained will be notified on their official email addresses, while those who are to be laid off will be notified on a personal email address.
On Friday, several Twitter employees said that access to their work laptops and email addresses had been shut off.
According to a regulatory filing, Twitter employed more than 7,000 workers at the end of 2021.
The social media platform said it would notify staff about their employment status by email starting Friday morning. Those who will keep their jobs will get an email to their work account, while employees who are being fired will be notified of the next steps via their personal email, the memo said.
In the email, Twitter also said that its offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended to ensure the safety of each employee, its systems and customer data. “If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home,” the email added.
Musk reportedly plans to cut nearly 75% of Twitter’s workforce, just after completing his $44 billion(over Rs 3,36,910 crore) purchase of the social media company on October 27. He also became “sole director” of Twitter, according to documents filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.
Musk, who also runs electric carmaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, started off his tenure at the company last week by firing top leadership, including Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and Legal Affairs and Policy Chief Vijaya Gadde.
At least five other senior Twitter executives, including the chief marketing officer, advertising chief, and the head of product have also left the company after Musk’s takeover.
Twitter down in India
Meanwhile, several Twitter users on Friday were not able to login to their accounts on the website in India.
Around 94% users reported problems with the Twitter website while 6% faced issues with the app, according to Downdetector, a platform that provides users with real-time information about the status of various websites and services.
The outage started at around 3 am and saw a spike at around 7 am, reported ANI.
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