It’s only been a week since Elon Musk took control of Twitter, yet many things have already changed. The biggest of all, at the moment, has to do with the mass layoffs occurred in the last few hours. It was not enough to send home the company’s top executives and effectively taking office as the sole member of the board of directors, Musk has decided to overdo it and to fire the company. half of the company’s employees which at the end of October had 7,500 employees.
However, the how the layoffs took place. An email informed the staff on Thursday evening that the cuts had arrived. “In an effort to get Twitter back on a healthy path, we will face the difficult process of shrinking our global workforce,” the text read. “We recognize that this will impact a number of people who have made a valuable contribution to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success in the future.”
The email alerted employees that they would know of their eventual dismissal by 9am Pacific time on Friday. But many employees, already late Thursday night, said they had lost access to their email and Slack accountsa sign that they would lose their jobs.
All this happens while different companiesincluding Pfizer, Audi, Volkswagen, General Mills and Mondelez International – the house that makes Oreo cookies – suspend their listings on the platform, waiting to understand what direction it will take. Musk promptly shifted all responsibility to activist pressure. “Twitter suffered a huge drop in revenue, due to pressure from activist groups on advertisers, although nothing has changed in content moderation and we have done everything possible to appease the activists. A real mess! – He concludes in the tweet – They are trying to destroy free speech in America ».
Too bad that it is precisely his actions that disprove these words. According to what was reported by the GuardianMusk would have fired the entirely curation team – the curators’ team – who took care of the fight against disinformation on the platform. The one played by them was a key role in covering civic interest events like elections, breaking news and sport. They were considered a fundamental filter against misleading posts. “This will make Twitter louder, more dangerous and less interesting,” said Toronto Star digital producer Richie Assaly, who says he previously worked as a member of the curating team.
Not only that, under the scythe of the last cuts the Human Rights team. This was announced by the company’s former human rights consultant, Shannon Raj Singh, whose team was involved in the implementation of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, to protect people at risk in global conflicts and crisesincluding Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Ukraine.
The class action of former employees: they accuse Twitter of not having received the right notice
A group of former employees filed a class action lawsuit with the U.S. federal court in San Francisco, asking Twitter to comply with federal law Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Actwhich provides a 60-day notice for mass layoffs with large employers.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of five Twitter employees, says one was fired on November 1, while three have not yet been notified of their dismissal at the time of the complaint, but have been blocked from their email accounts. One is then cited situation similar to that of layoffs at Musk’s other company, Teslawhere the company sought full release from its Warn Act obligations by offering a one- or two-week salary settlement.
“Plaintiffs are reasonably concerned that, in the absence of court intervention, Twitter will engage in similar behavior and seek the release of the dismissed employees without informing them of their rights or the pending of this lawsuit,” the document reads.
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