Twitter employees who were laid off by Elon Musk are now demanding $500 million in severance payments. They have filed a lawsuit and accused the company of intentionally refusing to pay the required amount.
Elon Musk laid off nearly 80% of Twitter staff just right after taking over the company. The billionaire later claimed that the company works efficiently even with 80% less staff. The employees that were laid off have sued the company multiple times and recently filed a lawsuit to make Twitter cover legal arbitration costs. But the latest legal dispute between Twitter and its former staff is about severance payments.
Twitter should pay $500 million in severance payments to its former employees
Courtney McMillian, who worked as Twitter’s head of total rewards and was laid off in January, has filed her class action in San Francisco federal court. She claims the company set up a program in 2019 to give laid-off staff two months of base pay plus one week of pay for each full year.
However, McMillian says most employees were given only one month of severance pay. Additionally, many are still waiting to receive their promised checks. While Twitter claims it had paid ex-employees in full, the lawsuit reveals that senior employees were owed six months of base pay. The social media company is now accused of violating federal law by refusing to pay severance.
Twitter currently has no media relations department. Reuters says the company responded to a request for comment with a poop emoji.
Besides refusing to pay severance, Twitter is also accused of failing to pay millions of dollars in bonuses to its current staff. Musk-owned platform tried to disregard the lawsuit by claiming it lacked merit. Other lawsuits also accused the company of targeting women and workers with disabilities.
Twitter has hit hard with the launch of Threads by Meta, claiming Threads is a clone of Twitter and Meta actually copied their platform. To date, Threads could manage to reach 100 million users. Relying on Instagram’s massive user base, Threads has the potential to overtake Twitter in terms of user count.