The thousands of Twitter employees who were laid off after CEO Elon Musk took over are still waiting to hear about their severance packages.
Back in November, Musk fired over 50% of Twitter’s staff to cut costs.
“Musk laid off roughly 50% of Twitter’s more than 7,000 employees on Nov. 4, just a week after taking control of the company,” Bloomberg reported. “Almost 1,000 of those who were terminated lived in California, according to documents filed with the state. Those workers were required under state and federal law to keep receiving regular paychecks over the past two months.”
On Wednesday, that 60-day period ended and former Twitter employees are still waiting for answers.
At the time of firing, Musk tweeted that the former employees were “offered 3 months of severance.”
The billionaire who acquired the social media platform for $44 billion has taken steps to reduce costs due to the possibility of bankruptcy. This week, he eliminated employee perks such as commuter benefits and meal allowances.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed against Twitter for unpaid bills, including charges for private chartered plane flights, software services, and rent at one of the company’s San Francisco offices.
Lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan, who represents hundreds of Twitter workers, have all worked their last day at the social media company but have heard nothing about their severance pay.
“No one has gotten any severance pay,” said Liss-Riordan.
“We don’t know what Elon Musk is doing — we expected that those severance agreements would have been sent out by now, because a lot of people had their last official day,” Liss-Riordan added. “We’re wondering what he’s planning to do but meanwhile we’re pushing forward with our legal actions.”
In New York, where Twitter has a large office, state labor laws dictate that the company must continue to pay its laid-off employees for a 90-day period.
Some of these employees were pregnant or dealing with other medical issues at the time of the layoffs, which has caused confusion over their insurance coverage.
“He’s got to make a decision here: does he really want to get into this costly drawn-out legal battle which is going to be very, very, very expensive for Twitter, or does he want to do the right thing and just take care of it now?” said Liss-Riordan.