Twitter sued as Elon Musk begins en masse layoffs

The lawsuit alleges that the company was eliminating workers without providing enough notice, in violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, a federal law that requires employers to provide advance notice to employees affected by plant closings and mass layoffs.

Filed by attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, the lawsuit sought a court order requiring Twitter to obey the WARN Act and restrict it from asking employees to sign any official documents consenting to give up their right to participate in litigation.

Bloomberg reported that Twitter was also being accused of violating a California law.

Several Twitter employees took to the microblogging platform as they lost access to their laptops, emails and internal slack channels. The hashtag #Lovewhereyouworked began trending on Twitter soon after.

Morgan Bell, an employee working with Twitter’s product management team, was one of the many who lost access. “Just lost access to my Twitter email and Slack. This is all so unreal. #LoveWhereYouWorked #OneTeam,” she tweeted.

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Rachel Bonn, another employee with Twitter’s product marketing team, faced the axe, too.

“Last Thursday in the SF office, really the last day Twitter was Twitter. 8 months pregnant and have a 9 month old. Just got cut off from laptop access #LoveWhereYouWorked,” she tweeted.

Earlier, Lisa Bloom, a Los Angeles-based trial lawyer fighting for victims of discrimination, harassment and abuse, had put out a detailed Twitter thread explaining the ramifications of disobeying the WARN Act.

“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 [Musk],” she tweeted.

She added that Twitter will be liable for all of these (civil penalties, lost compensation, lost medical and other benefits) and attorneys’ fees for the 60 days it failed to give workers notice.