Twitter wants federal court to dismiss collective employee layoff claims

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Twitter logo displayed on a cellphone with Elon Musk and the Twitter bird in the background.Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Twitter is fighting a lawsuit filed by a group of employees whose layoffs take effect in the new year.

The employees, who have been subject to mass layoffs since Elon Musk took office, are demanding more than a month’s severance pay.

Twitter lawyers say many employees received the legally required notice before the layoffs.

Twitter is asking a California federal court to dismiss a class action lawsuit brought by a group of employees pursuing “mass layoffs” on the social media platform since Elon Musk took over.

On Friday, Twitter asked the court to either transfer the allegations to Delaware where disputes over Musk’s acquisition of Twitter are to take place under the terms of the agreement, or to dismiss the potential class allegations in the lawsuit.

Twitter argued that the employees who filed the lawsuit themselves have different circumstances, and that they failed to properly state what broad claims a potential large class of Twitter employees would have.

One of the group’s employees who filed the complaint has already been fired, while the others’ official end dates on Twitter are in January and February 2023, according to an updated version of the employee complaint filed earlier this this month.

Twitter lawyers argued employees made ‘vague and imprecise’ statements about a collective group of Twitter employees they hoped to represent, and asked the court to dismiss their efforts to bring claims covering such a large employee base.

“The Complainants don’t even attempt to define a class, making only passing references to ‘thousands of other Twitter employees’ or ‘other Twitter employees in a similar situation,'” Twitter argued. in a filing filed in court on December 23.

An employee attorney, Shannon Liss-Riordan, told Insider on Sunday night that she and the employees she represents are “confident in our assertions.”

“We will do whatever is necessary to protect the rights of Twitter employees,” Liss-Riordan said.

“We’re calling on Elon Musk to show a celebratory spirit and honor the law and the promises made to Twitter employees,” she added. “Otherwise, we are ready to face him in 2023.”

The story continues

Twitter’s attorneys did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment Sunday night.

The lawsuit was brought by a group of Twitter employees who argue the layoffs happened so unexpectedly and offered so little severance package that they went against the assurances they had received of the company’s previous management before Musk’s purchase became official.

Employees said they expected, for example, to be able to continue working remotely for a year after the takeover, but Musk asked employees to return to the office. They also alleged that many of them were only offered a month’s severance package, instead of two months or more, as they typically did on Twitter before Musk’s takeover.

Twitter lawyers told the court that the employees who filed the lawsuit had varying issues and should be treated differently. Only one of them, for example, has already been expelled Emmanuel Cornet, who claims to have been fired on November 1 without notice.

The other employees, who won’t be officially laid off until the next two months, received the 60-day notice required under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act, a federal law that requires large companies to properly alert staff in the event of mass layoffs, Twitter told the court.

Twitter also argued that some of that group’s employees are bound by arbitration and that’s where their claims should play out.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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