Twitter (now X) has finally paid staff members it laid off in its African headquarters about 14 months after they were sacked.
The sacked staff were part of Elon Musk’s 6,000 global staff cut after he took over the company in 2022. Most laid-off staff in the firm’s African headquarters in Accra, Ghana, had only been on the job for months.
Read also: Navigating E-drama and cyberbullying: Insights from the X (Twitter) landscape
The year-long resolution was led by Agency Seven Seven, a Ghanaian-based business advisory firm. It revealed that it got a redundancy settlement and repatriation expenses for foreign staff during negotiations.
It said of the process, “The team, who were initially laid off without any severance in November 2022 subsequent to the sale of Twitter Inc to Mr Elon Musk, were seeking to enforce their rights under the redundancy provisions of Ghana’s Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651). Section 65 of the Labour Act requires employers to file a notice with the Chief Labour Officer of Ghana and then to engage in settlement negotiations with affected staff before implementing a redundancy exercise.”
It added, “Agency Seven Seven Managing Partner Carla Olympio played a strategic role in the successful resolution of the matter in favour of the former Twitter staff members. We congratulate this team on the final resolution of this year – long process and wish them the absolute best in all their future endeavours.”
Last year, sacked Twitter staff members in Africa threatened to sue the company for failing to pay the redundancy money it promised. When Musk laid off about 6,000 employees in November 2022, he tweeted that the company was losing over $4m daily because of its large workforce. He also added that everyone sacked had been paid three months of severance.
Read also: Twitter glitch helps hacker outsmart CIA
In early 2023, ex-employees filed a suit against X in a California court for allegedly refusing to pay at least $500 million in promised severance packages. According to a CNBC report, global arbitration cases against the organisation stood at more than 2,200 as of August 2023.
