Twitter still hasn’t sent out a severance agreement, and former employees are demanding answers
Twitter will lay off about half of its 7,500 employees in early November 2022, new CEO Elon Musk said. confirmed “All laid-off workers were offered three months’ severance pay, 50% more than required by law.”
While the laid-off workers received two months’ salary until January 4 (the official date of their layoff), there is no word on when they will receive their severance pay after being laid off.
“I had no contact,” former Twitter employee Helen-Sage Lee told Forbes on Thursday. “There has been no communication from Twitter headquarters regarding termination, separation agreements, or next steps. »
Another former employee told Forbes that he also received “no severance pay and no information about the federal benefit that allows former employees to stay on health insurance.”
While Musk has promised an extra month’s pay as severance pay, those workers say they’re actually owed more, given what Twitter already agreed to pay before the billionaire’s acquisition. That severance package was also supposed to include bonuses, stock purchases, and other perks that could amount to tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per employee.
Neither Twitter attorney Eric Meckley nor Elon Musk himself responded to Forbes’ request for comment.
Because of Twitter’s inaction, Boston attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan announced Thursday that she has filed 100 more arbitration lawsuits on behalf of Twitter’s former employees. Arbitration is a quasi-legal process that generally favors companies over individual employees, and many companies require employees to take their disputes to arbitration rather than to court.
The 100 new claims are in addition to four lawsuits, three complaints filed with the National Labor Relations Board and an earlier round of 100 arbitration claims he and his firm already filed based on largely similar laws.
In one of the lawsuits brought by Ms. Liss-Riordan, known as Cornet v. A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Twitter last month that the company must include several pending class-action lawsuits in severance agreements for former employees. But Twitter hasn’t done that yet. (Twitter also argued that the case should be dismissed on the grounds that it should be resolved by arbitration — a San Francisco judge will hold a hearing on that particular issue later this month).
If former employees sign a severance agreement — no matter what — they’ll give up their right to sue the company.
“It’s a big surprise that they haven’t sent anything yet,” Liss-Riordan told Forbes. “We don’t know what Elon Musk is thinking. »
Other attorneys in Los Angeles and New York also filed comparable arbitration claims late last year on behalf of former employees.
Lisa Bloom, lead attorney at her Los Angeles-based firm, The Bloom Firm, which now represents former Twitter employees, told Forbes in an email that other clients of hers have had similar experiences.
“Twitter employees received two months of continuous base pay and some (but not all) of their benefits for two months from Nov. 4 to Jan. 4,” it said. “The promised third month never came. »
For her part, Ms. Liss-Riordan remains confused and noted the Twitter CEO’s tweets earlier Thursday. “The last tweet I saw from him was about Kevin McCarthy, so he’s really paying attention to his former employees,” he quipped.
Article translated from US Forbes – Author: Cyrus Farivar
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