Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and the new owner of Twitter, is facing a class action from aggrieved former employees for ignoring the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and the Californian State WARN law which mandates employers to give workers a 60 days termination notice before laying them off.
The lawsuit was filed on Thursday evening in a San Francisco federal court by a lawyer representing the affected former employees. The employees are asking the court to order Twitter to obey the WARN Act and restrict the company from soliciting employees to sign documents that could give up their right to participate in litigation.
Twitter had in a memo sent to all employees this week, said it has concluded plans to lay off 60 percent of its total workers by close of work on Friday 4 November 2022.
Experts have pointed out that because Musk only confirmed the conclusion of th3 $44 billion Twitter acquisition on Friday 28 October, it is practically impossible that the workers would have received the 60 days mandated notification of termination required by Californian State law.
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The notice must be given in the case of a massive layoff. Lisa Bloom, a US trial lawyer says the Twitter 60 percent layoff qualifies under the law.
The WARN law applies to all California employers of 75 or more full-time or part-time employees, which includes Twitter with about 7500 employees. Employees must have also been employed for at least six of the 12 months preceding the date of the required notice to be counted.
“Employers like Twitter who violate the WARN Act face civil penalties of $500/day for each violation. With thousands of employees, this could be significant, though maybe not to Elon,” Bloom said.
The employer is also liable for the cost of any benefits to which the employee would have been entitled had his or her employment not been lost, including the cost of any medical expenses incurred by the employee that would have been covered under an employee benefit plan. The employer is liable for a period of violation up to 60 days or one-half the number of days the employee was employed, whichever period is smaller.
The purpose of the law is to give laid-off employees time to figure out how to handle the disruption.
“We filed this lawsuit tonight in an attempt to make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights,” said Shannon Liss-Riodan, the attorney who filed the complaint.
