San Francisco-based social media giant Twitter notified state and local agencies on Friday of plans to lay off nearly 800 employees who had worked at the building on Market Street.
Twitter layoffs under new CEO Elon Musk, prompted a class action lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco by employees who alleged the firings violated state and federal employment laws.
The lawsuit, filed by attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan on behalf of Twitter employees at the company’s offices in San Francisco and Cambridge, Massachusetts, alleges that Musk’s plans to lay off employees are not permitted under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) as well as the state’s WARN Act.
Federal law requires businesses with 100 or more full-time employees to provide at least 60 calendar days' notice of a closure or layoff that affects 500 or more employees at a single worksite.
One employee included in the lawsuit says he was notified earlier this week of his firing without notice, while others said they were locked out of their accounts this week.
On Friday, a letter sent by Twitter’s human resources department to the state Employment Development Department and San Francisco city officials said 784 employees at the company’s offices at 1355 Market St. will be laid off, but the layoffs won’t take effect until Jan. 4, 2023.
On Friday afternoon, Musk acknowledged the layoffs, writing on Twitter that “unfortunately, there is no other option when the company is losing over $4M a day. Everyone who left was offered 3 months severance pay, which is 50 percent more than legally required.”
Local politicians criticized Twitter’s firings, including state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who called Musk’s moves “deeply troubling.”
“While companies periodically conduct layoffs to acknowledge economic realities, firing half of employees goes far beyond that. Combined with Musk’s signals that he will allow toxic accounts back on the platform — leading to incitement of violence against LGBTQ people, Jews, people of color, and others — I see trouble for Twitter, its users, and our democracy,” Wiener said.
For his part, State Assemblyman Matt Haney, Democrat of San Francisco, said that “cutting jobs by the thousands without warning at Twitter creates a hostile work environment of ‘nightmare’ and instability on a site that people use to access critical information just days before an election, don’t defend it or justify it, it’s wrong, mean-spirited and dangerous.”
Haney also said that “we do not live in a country or state where private companies can do whatever they want. Laws apply in the workplace.”
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