Twitter’s employees have filed a class action lawsuit to prevent new owner Elon Musk from firing half the country.
According to TMZ, the employees filed the lawsuit on Thursday, asking a judge to declare any firings now would be in violation of California and federal law, in part because there was insufficient notice.
In an internal email, the social media company said the cuts are “an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path”.
The email — which was only signed “Twitter” — informed workers to stay away from all offices Friday as Musk begins to clean house, the New York Times reported. An exact head count was not provided in the email, but the NYT says half the staff is set to be fired.
“We will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” Twitter said in the email.
“We recognise this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward,” it added.
Musk has already gone on a mini-firing spree after inking the deal to buy San Francisco-based company Oct. 27. As we reported, the world’s richest man promptly gave walking papers to several top Twitter executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal.
All staff are set to receive an email with the subject “Your Role at Twitter” by 09:00 Pacific time (16:00 GMT) on Friday.
Workers who are not affected will be notified through their company email, according to Twitter.
Meanwhile, those who are affected will be told of the “next steps” through their personal accounts.
“Given the nature of our distributed workforce and our desire to inform impacted individuals as quickly as possible, communications for this process will take place via email,” Twitter said.
