Former Twitter employees receive redundancy offer after months of waiting. Many are unhappy with this | CNN Business

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After months of uncertainty and feeling in the dark, many former Twitter employees affected by a mass layoff in early November began receiving their severance offers over the weekend. But some are frustrated by the offer and the conditions attached to it.

The offer of dismissal promises a month’s salary in exchange for agreeing to different terms, including a non-disparagement agreement and waiving the right to take any legal action against the company, according to Lisa Bloom, a lawyer representing dozens of former Twitter employees affected by the layoffs.

Many were unhappy with the offer, according to public officials and lawyers representing the former employees, saying it falls short of the “3 months of layoff” which new owner Elon Musk had previously promised would be provided. (That time period appeared to include payment for the 60-day advance notice that Twitter was required to provide under various state laws.) The amount is also significantly less than that provided to rivals such as Facebook parent Meta. which laid off thousands of workers around the same time and guaranteed them 16 weeks of base pay plus an additional two weeks for each year of employment with the company.

Former Twitter employees are now stuck deciding whether to accept the money or join the hundreds of others who have already filed arbitration claims or lawsuits against the company.

“We’ve been hearing from hundreds of Twitter employees who are considering their options and are unhappy that they only got one month of severance, after they were promised much more,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, another attorney working on behalf of former Twitter employees. he told CNN in a statement Monday. “We have already filed hundreds of arbitration claims and will continue to file them.”

The layoff scramble comes as Musk struggles to cut costs at the company he bought in October for $44 billion, including a significant amount of debt. After laying off half the company in early November, Musk continued to cut and fire additional employees, even requiring any who remained to sign a commitment to “hardcore” work.

Twitter’s trust and security team experienced at least a dozen additional cuts on Friday, according to a Bloomberg report over the weekend.

Bloom, who said he has also filed dozens of arbitration claims on behalf of former Twitter employees, said the severance offer does not include prorated bonuses or accelerated stock vesting for eligible employees. which could amount to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. of lost funds for some affected workers. The company typically provided such benefits to laid-off employees before Musk’s takeover, he said.

The severance offer would also require the signing employees to agree not to cooperate as a witness in any legal action brought by third parties against Twitter. But they would also have to agree to cooperate on Twitter’s behalf in its defense to “provide truthful information” as a witness in any legal action against the company, the lawyers said.

A Twitter employee fired during the mass layoffs in early November tweeted over the weekend urging affected colleagues not to “click on or accept ANYTHING from this package” without first talking to a lawyer. “For me personally, money is one component,” they said. “It’s about principles. I strongly believe we should hold people accountable for the promises they make and don’t keep.”

To add insult to injury, at least one former employee claimed on Twitter that the layoff offer went to his email’s spam folder.