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Twitter faces class action lawsuit over California firings

Twitter's failure to give a 60-day notice on mass layoffs has found the company in hot water.

Donovan Erskine

November 4, 2022 7:40 AM

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It didn’t take long for Twitter to become the subject of a class action lawsuit following Elon Musk’s takeover of the company. One of the billionaire’s first orders of business was to lay off roughly half of Twitter’s workforce, with thousands of employees across different departments relieved of their duties. However, this move may have violated a California law that requires companies to provide a 60-day notice for mass layoffs.

California’s WARN law is designed to protect workers by requiring companies to give at least 60 days of notice before performing mass layoffs, as lawyer Lisa Bloom pointed out on Twitter. The law considers “massive layoffs” to be 50 or more workers. With Twitter axing approximately 3,700 employees, it easily clears that bar. With the social media company sending out emails to staff about pending layoffs on Thursday, the class action lawsuit was filed almost immediately.

This certainly wouldn’t be the first time an Elon Musk-led company was hit with massive layoffs. CNBC’s Lora Kolodny pointed out that when Tesla laid off 229 workers from its San Mateo office earlier this year, the company made a deliberate decision to pay them for 60 days after their last date working before officially severing ties, as to avoid breaking California’s WARN law. Although there’s no confirmation, we could very well see Twitter go the same route.

The Twitter layoffs are an unfortunate result of Elon Musk assuming full control of the social media company, as he restructures things to fit his vision. With things changing behind the scenes, the user experience on Twitter will soon be changing as well. Twitter is set to introduce a revamp of the Twitter Blue subscription, which will make account verification a paid perk. For the latest Twitter news, Shacknews has the latest updates.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_