Twitter hit by legal complaints from 100 former employees following Musk’s layoffs

By Clare Duffy, CNN

Twitter has been hit with allegations from 100 former employees affected by mass layoffs at the company, including that it unfairly laid off more women than men, terminated employees who were actively on medical or parental leave and reneged on promises related to severance pay.

The allegations were included as part of the former employees’ demands for arbitration against the company, according to a statement on Tuesday by attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan.

Liss-Riordan is the same attorney who has brought four proposed class action lawsuits against Twitter by former employees affected by Elon Musk’s takeover. The arbitration demands are meant to help workers who can’t participate in that litigation because of contracts they signed with the company.

Claims in the arbitration demands mirror those in the lawsuits. Some also claim that Musk placed “unreasonable demands” on Twitter’s workforce in an effort to shrink its staff, according to the statement.

“The conduct of Twitter since Musk took over is incredibly egregious, and we will pursue every avenue to protect workers and extract from Twitter the compensation that is due to them,” Liss-Riordan said in the statement. She added that her firm has heard from hundreds of former Twitter employees and has filed only the “first wave” of arbitration demands.

“We are ready to fight them one by one, on behalf of potentially thousands of employees if that becomes necessary,” she said.

Liss-Riordan previously brought three proposed class action suits on behalf of female employees, disabled employees and contractors who were laid off. Another suit was filed by a group of former employees who accuse Twitter of breach of contract because it allegedly failed to follow through on promises to allow remote work and provide consistent severance benefits after the acquisition.

Twitter, which recently laid off much of its communications department, did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the arbitration demands. Twitter has denied the breach of contract allegations in the lawsuit brought by former employees about remote work and severance, and it has not responded to the claims in the three other suits.

Liss-Riordan has also filed three complaints against Twitter with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of employees affected by the layoffs.

The mounting claims by former employees come after Twitter terminated about half of its staff in a mass layoff last month shortly after Musk’s takeover. Musk later pushed out hundreds of additional employees, including by requiring them to agree to an ultimatum to work “extremely hardcore” or leave the company.

The former employees suing Twitter scored an early win last week when a judge ruled in favor of their motion ordering the company to alert all laid-off employees of the pending lawsuits before requiring them to sign severance agreements waiving their rights to litigation.

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