Twitter Hit With Class-Action Lawsuit Over Layoffs

The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act mandates that employers must provide 60 days’ notice prior to implementing mass layoffs. New Twitter owner Elon Musk barely waited six days. A class-action lawsuit (Cornet vs. Twitter, 22-cv-06857) was filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in San Francisco, asking the court to order Twitter to abide by the federal WARN Act and the California WARN Act, as well as to restrict the company from coercing employees to sign documents that would have them give up their rights to participate in litigation against Twitter. The plaintiffs are also seeking attorneys’ fees and costs, compensatory damages (including wages owed), declaratory relief and pre- and post-judgment interest. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. According to the complaint, Twitter terminated plaintiff and software engineer Emmanuel Cornet Nov. 1 without the 60 days’ notice mandated by the federal and state WARN Acts, and the same happened Nov. 3 when plaintiffs Justine De Caires (senior software engineer), Grae Kindel (senior software engineer) and Jessica Pan were locked out of their company accounts. The suit also noted that a spokesman for California’s Employment Development Department told Kate Conger and Ryan Mac of The New York Times Thursday evening that the agency did not receive any notice from Twitter regarding the layoffs. Shannon Liss-Riordan, attorney for the plaintiffs, told Josh Eidelson of Bloomberg, “We filed this lawsuit tonight in an attempt the make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights.” Eidelson reported that Liss-Riordan filed a lawsuit against automaker Tesla, also run by Musk, in June, after 10% of that company’s workforce was laid off, but Tesla won a federal court ruling in Austin, Texas, sending affected employees into closed-door arbitration, and Musk told Bloomberg editor in chief John Micklethwait at the Qatar Economic Forum that month that the lawsuit was “trivial.” The federal WARN Act covers companies with 100 or more employees and requires them to provide notice prior to mass layoffs that do not result from plant closings for 500 or more employees. New ownership is covered in the terms, as the buyer is responsible for providing notice of any mass layoff that occurs once the transaction is concluded. The only exceptions to the requirement for 60 days’ notice are: a faltering company where giving notice would thwart an opportunity for new capital or business, which only applies to plant closings; unforeseeable business circumstances; and natural disasters. Employers who violate the provision on giving notice are liable for back pay and benefits for each aggrieved employee for the period of violation, up to 60 days, and subject to a civil penalty not to exceed $500 for each day of violation, which may be waived if the employer satisfied the liability to each aggrieved employee. Liss-Riordan told Bloomberg, “We will now see if (Musk) is going to continue to thumb his nose at the laws of this country that protect employees. It appears that he’s repeating the same playbook of what he did at Tesla.” And she told Clare Duffy and Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, “Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has made clear that he believes complying with federal labor laws is ‘trivial.’ We have filed this federal complaint to ensure that Twitter should be held accountable to our laws and to prevent Twitter employees from unknowingly signing away their rights.”

Leadership & Talent

Twitter Hit With Class-Action Lawsuit Over Layoffs

The company did not provide 60 days’ notice, as required by the federal and California WARN Acts

David Cohen

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David Cohen