Elon Musk’s Twitter Sued by Workers Impacted by Massive Layoff

A group of Twitter workers is suing the company over Elon Musk’s plan to eliminate about 3,700 jobs, saying the social media platform did not give proper notice as required by federal and California law.

Bloomberg reports that Twitter is being sued over Elon Musk’s recently announced plans to cut approximately 3,700 jobs from the social media platform, with workers claiming that they were not given enough notice in violation of federal and California law.

Twitter said in an email to employees sent on Thursday that the company plans to begin cutting staff by Friday. Musk intends to fulfill his pledge to reduce costs at the company he recently acquired for $44 billion by doing away with half of its employees, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

The lawsuit claims that the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires large companies to warn of mass layoffs with at least 60 days of advance notice. The suit asks the court to compel Twitter to comply with the WARN Act, and to prohibit the company from soliciting employees to sign documents relinquishing their right to participate in lawsuits.

Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who filed Thursday’s complaint, said: “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.”

Liss-Riordan previously represented Tesla workers with similar claims against Musk in June after the vehicle maker laid off about 10 percent of its workforce. Tesla won a ruling from a federal judge in Austin forcing the workers in that case to pursue their claims in closed-door arbitration rather than open court. Musk commented on the suit multiple times, labeling it “trivial.”

Liss-Riordan commented on Musk’s management style: “We will now see if he is going to continue to thumb his nose at the laws of this country that protect employees. It appears that he’s repeating the same playbook of what he did at Tesla.”

Read more at Bloomberg here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan