Elon Musk began laying off as many as half of the company’s 7,500 employees on Friday morning, following his $44 billion takeover of the company. According to multiple reports, he stated that he will require the remaining employees to return to the office, a sharp reversal of the company’s current work-from-home forever policy.
We are tracking the latest updates and impacts on the San Francisco Bay Area as news of massive layoffs spreads across the Twittersphere.
Elon Musk has broken his silence on Twitter layoffs, claiming that he had ‘no choice’ but to fire thousands of Twitter employees just days after acquiring the company.
Musk tweeted on Saturday, November 5th, 2022, that he had “no choice” but to make this move because the company was facing a significant financial loss.
“With regard to Twitter’s force reduction, unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” he wrote. “Everyone who left was given three months of severance pay, which is 50% more than what is legally required.”
The New York Times reported that sources close to the situation revealed that Musk intended to fire roughly half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees. In response to the news, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to the newly acquired social media platform to explain his position.
Employees were reportedly told to stay at home and wait for an email about their future with the company.
Musk tweeted on Friday, November 4, 2022, “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.” Really screwed up! They’re attempting to end free speech in the United States.
According to NPR, several employees swiftly moved to file a class action lawsuit on Thursday in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of Twitter employees in response to the action.
According to the lawsuit, Twitter is firing employees without providing them with enough notice in violation of both Californian and federal employment laws. Before conducting mass layoffs, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN, mandates at least a 60-day notice,” according to the outlet.
However, Liss-Riordan subsequently revealed that workers would receive a three-month severance package, which Musk later reiterated in a tweet.
