A group of laid-off Twitter employees are trying to sue Twitter, but a judge ordered them to drop their class action lawsuit, which accused Twitter of not following through on its severance pay package promise. This was reported earlier by Bloomberg and Reuters.
The judge, in the ruling, stated the Twitter's contract "expressly" stated that arbitration isn't mandatory and also provides an option for employees to opt out of the procedure. Because the employees failed to opt out of arbitration, which would have given them a chance to settle things in court, they can't proceed with the lawsuit.
Twitter even provided the employees signed copies of the agreements, which were clear and straightforward. Five of the employees were ordered to arbitration on an individual basis and the judge will decide at a later date what to do with everyone else.
The group of employees, now no longer employed at Twitter, first filed this lawsuit in November, 2022 and accused Twitter of not providing enough notice before they were laid off in violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN). This act requires employers to provide 60 days of notice for company-wide layoffs.
Elon Musk first promised 3 months of severance pay when he first took over Twitter, but many employees laid off said they've only received one month worth of pay in addition to the two months of non-working pay they also received in compliance with the WARN act. The lawsuit argues that the laid off employees should receive at least two months of pay along with the non-working pay.
More details are sure to come with this story as the year goes on. Do you think these employees were treated fairly? What would you have done differently?
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