Twitter Inc temporarily closed its offices and cut workers’ access to internal systems on Friday after telling employees they would be informed by email about whether they were being laid off.
An internal memo on Thursday warned that cuts would be coming.
The move follows a week of uncertainty about the company’s future under new owner Elon Musk.
The social media company said in an email to staff it would tell them by 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday (12 p.m. EDT/1600 GMT) about staff cuts.
“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” said the email sent on Thursday, according to Reuters.
Twitter had about 7,500 workers prior to Musk’s takeover. It’s unclear exactly how many Twitter employees have been or will be laid off. In recent days, there have been reports that Twitter could cut 25% to 50% of its staff as Musk rethinks how the platform operates and attempts to improve the company’s bottom line after taking out significant debt financing to fund his $44 billion acquisition.
Several Twitter employees on Thursday night filed a class action lawsuit alleging that Twitter is in violation of the federal and California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act) after laying off some employees already.
The WARN Act requires that an employer with more than 100 employees must provide 60 days’ advanced written notice prior to a mass layoff “affecting 50 or more employees at a single site of employment.”
“Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has made clear that he believes complying with federal labor laws is ‘trivial,’” Attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who filed the lawsuit, said in a statement. “We have filed this federal complaint to ensure that Twitter be held accountable to our laws and to prevent Twitter employees from unknowingly signing away their rights.”
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