Fired Twitter employees demand Elon Musk pay $500M in ‘promised’ severance

Twitter on Wednesday was hit with a lawsuit accusing it of refusing to pay at the very least $500 million in promised severance to hundreds of staff who had been laid off after Elon Musk acquired the company.

Courtney McMillian, who oversaw Twitter’s worker advantages packages as its “head of complete 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 had been promised two months of their base pay plus one week of pay for every full 12 months of service in the event that they had been laid off.

Senior staff resembling McMillian had been owed six months of base pay, in accordance with the lawsuit.

However Twitter solely gave laid-off employees at most one month of severance pay, and plenty 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 company in October.

Twitter not has a media relations division.

The corporate responded to a request for remark with a poop emoji.

The lawsuit accuses Twitter and Musk of violating a federal regulation regulating worker profit plans.

Twitter has already been sued for allegedly failing to pay severance, however these circumstances contain breach of contract claims and never the advantages regulation.

The corporate 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 corporate can be going through a sequence of different lawsuits stemming from the layoffs that started final 12 months, together with claims that it targeted women and workers with disabilities.

Twitter has denied wrongdoing within the circumstances through which it has filed responses.