Twitter employees who have lost their jobs will receive a «severance package» of three months’ salary following a mass layoff at the company on Friday ordered by its new owner, South African tycoon Elon Musk.
This was announced by the billionaire himself in a message on the social network, assuring that a drastic reduction of the workforce has been carried out because «there was no other option».
«All those who have been laid off have been offered three months’ severance, which is 50 percent more than legally required,» Musk said.
«With respect to the reduction of Twitter’s workforce, unfortunately there is no other option when the company is losing more than four million dollars (similar figure in euros) per day,» he has added, assuring their conditions are better than those required by law in the United States.
However, Musk will face a lawsuit from several former Twitter employees who consider that the company’s dismissal is unfair since it would have violated federal and state laws for not giving at least 60 days’ notice.
The lawsuit was filed in a San Francisco court by five workers, one of whom was fired, according to the brief, on Tuesday, just two days before Musk announced to thousands of them via email that starting this Friday the workforce, which currently consists of 7,500 people, would be drastically reduced.
During Thursday afternoon, Twitter shut down its offices and suspended access to the company’s ID badges and work computers «to help ensure the safety of every employee, as well as Twitter’s systems and customer data.»
As a result, thousands of employees learned that their future was no longer with the company when they tried to access their computers provided by the social network, which displayed an error message.
In addition, during the morning of Friday, workers who have been dismissed have been notified through their personal email, while those who have remained in the company have known through their company emails, generating uncertainty throughout the night to employees of the company.
«Team, in an effort to put Twitter on a healthy path, we will be going through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,» the company explained in a notification sent to Twitter workers.
The billionaire has eliminated half of Twitter’s workforce, fulfilling plans to cut costs at the social media platform he acquired for $44 billion (a similar figure in euros), experts consulted by Bloomberg have recounted.
