Twitter owes $500 million to ex-employees in severance, lawsuit claims

Twitter Inc on Wednesday was hit with a lawsuit accusing it of refusing to pay not less than $500 million in promised severance to 1000’s of staff who have been laid off after Elon Musk acquired the corporate.

Courtney McMillian, who oversaw Twitter’s worker advantages packages as its “head of total rewards” earlier than she was laid off in January, filed the proposed class motion in San Francisco federal court docket.

McMillian claims that beneath a severance plan created by Twitter in 2019, most employees have been promised two months of their base pay plus one week of pay for every full yr of service in the event that they have been laid off. Senior staff similar to McMillian have been owed six months of base pay, based on the lawsuit.

But Twitter solely gave laid-off employees at most one month of severance pay, and lots of of them didn’t obtain something, McMillian claims.

Twitter laid off greater than half of its workforce as a cost-cutting measure after Musk acquired the corporate in October.

Twitter not has a media relations division. The firm responded to a request for remark with a poop emoji.

The lawsuit accuses Twitter and Musk of violating a federal legislation regulating worker profit plans. Twitter has already been sued for allegedly failing to pay severance, however these instances contain breach of contract claims and never the advantages legislation. The firm has stated it has paid ex-employees in full.

A pending lawsuit filed final month accuses Twitter of additionally failing to pay hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in bonuses it owes to remaining staff. Twitter has stated the claims lack advantage.

The firm can also be dealing with a collection of different lawsuits stemming from the layoffs that started final yr, together with claims that it focused ladies and employees with disabilities. Twitter has denied wrongdoing within the instances by which it has filed responses.