Twitter sued as mass layoffs begin

A lawsuit has been filed against Twitter in a San Francisco federal court over Elon Musk’s plan to lay off about half its workforce.

According to Twitter employees the company was firing workers without enough notice period which is in violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. The act requires covered employers to provide advance notice to employees that will be affected by plant closing and mass layoffs.

The lawsuit was filed by attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan who requested the court to issue an order requiring Twitter to obey WARN Act and restrict the company from asking employees to sign any official document that would mean that the employees would give up their right to participate in litigation.

According to reports several Twitter employees lost their access to their laptops, emails and internal slack channels.

Rachel Bonn, an employee with Twitter’s product marketing team tweeted “Last Thursday in the SF office, really the last day Twitter was Twitter. 8 months pregnant and have a 9 month old. Just got cut off from laptop access #LoveWhereYouWorked.”

Morgan Bell, another employee with Twitter’s product management team lost access to her email and slack tweeted the same confirming that they were sacked.

According to Lisa Bloom, a Los Angeles-based trial lawyer Twitter will be liable to civil penalties, lost compensation, lost medical, attorneys fees and other benefits for the 60 days it failed to give notice. She is lawyers that helps victims of harassment, discrimination and abuse. PTI