Twitter Sued Over Elon Musk’s Massive Layoffs

Elon Musk and Twitter are being sued for the 3,700 workers who were just laid off.

By James Brizuela | Published

Elon Musk’s purchasing of Twitter has been full of issues from the start, including an initial lawsuit that saw the company going after Musk for wanting to back out of his agreed-upon deal. Now that Musk is in full control, he has begun a massive wave of layoffs, leading to another large lawsuit. Employees who have been unceremoniously let go are now filing a class action lawsuit stating they were not given enough notice about being let go, which violates California state laws.

Elon Musk had previously stated that he was planning to cut about half the workforce of Twitter once he took over. Those layoffs began on Friday, as some 3,700 jobs were eliminated immediately. This has now led to many people being understandably upset about losing their positions and getting together to file this new class action lawsuit against Twitter.

elon musk

This lawsuit was filed on Thursday in the San Francisco federal court and is labeled as Cornet v. Twitter Inc. The lawsuit contains many signatures from workers that were let go, stating that Elon Musk is in violation of the Federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. This act prevents large companies from allowing massive layoffs without at least 60 days’ notice, which is something that Musk has certainly not paid much attention to with his first round of layoffs.

Workers are also ironically sharing their stories on Twitter about being let go while adding the hashtag, #oneteam. One worker stated that she was locked out of her work laptop Thursday night, and she happens to be eight months pregnant and not unemployed. Elon Musk is certainly someone who doesn’t mind causing plenty of issues, and we would imagine that there is going to be some sort of settlement coming. He nearly backed out of buying Twitter until the very last minute when that lawsuit was set to happen, and we would imagine he is going to be engaging in the same tactic to settle with the workers who were let go.

Shannon Liss-Riordan is the attorney who filed the complaint on Thursday, and she has experience with Elon Musk, as she was also the attorney representing workers for Tesla Inc recently. Musk’s company laid off 10% of its workers in June, leading to another similar lawsuit, though the outcome of the lawsuit did not go well for the workers involved. We would imagine that this Twitter fiasco might have a lot more merit considering that 3,700 jobs were eliminated in a day’s time.

Elon Musk’s purchasing of Twitter seems to be the biggest headline right now, especially considering all the massive changes he is already making, which include making those who are verified pay a monthly fee. There are droves of people who are now swearing to leave the platform altogether, which we would imagine is not all going to be true, considering there are plenty of people who depend on the platform for marketing. These massive layoffs could turn Twitter into Warner Bros. Discovery, which continues to report massive losses in profit.