Former employees call out Twitter's 'inhumane' layoffs

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SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 13, 2019.— Reuters
SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 13, 2019.— Reuters 

Four ex-Twitter employees who are suing the social media site have discussed with CNET how the mass layoffs happened and said the business had breached their rights as employees.

At a news conference on Thursday outside the Phillip Burton Federal Building & United States Courthouse in San Francisco, Emmanuel "Manu" Cornet, a former Twitter engineer, said, "It seems like those layoffs have been done in a way that's incredibly sloppy, inhumane, and perhaps illegal."

In November, after billionaire Elon Musk gained control of the microblogging platform, Twitter fired Cornet. In a complaint, Cornet and other former Twitter workers claim that the firm broke federal and California labour rules, which call for employers to give employees written notice of a mass layoff 60 days in advance.

After Musk's takeover, Twitter's legal problems have only become worse. More than half of Twitter's 7,500 employees were let go as Musk tried to reduce expenses.

As per a CNET report, a labour attorney named Shannon Liss-Riordan filed four cases against Twitter on behalf of the ex-workers, including contractors, seeking class-action status. 

Disabled workers are among those who claim that Musk's demands for employees to be more "hardcore" and work from home pushed them to quit their employment due to health issues.

There are lives on the line, yet Musk, the richest man in the world, seems to have bought this company more as a toy than anything else, according to Riordan.

A new complaint asserts that Twitter's layoffs "impacted female employees to a far larger extent than male employees". According to the lawsuit, Twitter let go of 57% of its female employees and just 47% of its male employees.

"It's not a huge surprise, unfortunately, that women were hit so hard by these layoffs when Elon Musk was the one overseeing these incredibly ad hoc layoffs," Riordan said.

In response to a request for comment regarding the lawsuits, Twitter, which recently downsized its communications team, remained silent.

Some of the fired employees claimed they were taking part in legal actions to support some of their friends and former coworkers.

One of the primary plaintiffs in the gender discrimination complaint and former Twitter engineer Willow Wren Turkal said she knows former employees who have to support families, have visa concerns, or are just starting their careers, reported the outlet.

"I want them to come out of this getting what is due to them," she said.