Two women who lost their jobs at Twitter when billionaire Elon Musk took over are suing the company in federal court, claiming last month’s abrupt mass layoffs disproportionately hit female employees.
The discrimination lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal challenges musk Decimating the Twitter workforce through mass layoffs and layoffs.
Days after the world’s richest man sold the social media platform for $44 billion (approx. The lawsuit, filed in a San Francisco federal court this week, alleges that 57 percent of female employees were fired, compared with fewer than half of men, although before the layoffs, Twitter employed more men overall.
The cuts continued throughout November, as Musk fired engineers who questioned or criticized him and gave all remaining employees a choice to quit with a severance package or sign a form saying “extremely hard work,” long hours and commitment to Twitter’s new direction. Scores more lost their jobs after refusing to make the pledge.
The lawsuit alleges that women “who are more likely to care for children and other family members and are therefore unable to meet such demands” would also be disproportionately harmed.
San Francisco-based Twitter started the year with about 7,500 employees worldwide, according to a filing with securities regulators. Now a private company, it hasn’t announced how many are left. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday for former employees Carolina Bernal Strifling and Willow Wren Turkal on behalf of similarly situated female workers, alleges that 57 percent of female employees were fired as of Nov. 4, compared with 47 percent of those male clerk, citing a table . The plaintiffs are scheduled to speak about the lawsuit on Thursday.
The gap is even wider for women in engineering positions — 63 percent were fired, compared to 48 percent of men in engineering positions, according to the lawsuit brought by prominent Boston labor attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who ran an unsuccessful trial in the Democratic primary campaign for the attorney general of Massachusetts earlier this year.
“The mass termination of employees at Twitter has affected female employees to a much greater extent than male employees – and to a highly statistically significant extent,” Liss-Riordan wrote. “In addition, Elon Musk has made a number of publicly discriminatory statements against women, further confirming that the greater impact of mass layoffs on female employees is due to discrimination.”
Liss-Riordan told a courthouse hearing that she wanted to show that “the richest man in the world is not above the law.”
“Musk and Twitter believe they will never be held accountable in court. We argue that the arbitration agreements (signed by Twitter employees) are unenforceable. But if we have to go through arbitration sequentially, we’re willing to do that,” Liss-Riordan said.
“Of all the problems Elon Musk faces, this is the easiest to solve: treat workers with respect, pay them what the law deserves,” she added.
The lawsuit adds to a number of examples of fired Twitter employees in the US and elsewhere fighting back. A group of employees are filing individual claims for arbitration in California because the documents they signed when they joined the company waived their right to a class action and a jury trial.
“To date we have filed five,” her attorney, Lisa Bloom, said in an email on Thursday. “The number will continue to increase every day.”
In Ireland, an executive is fighting the company in court to get her job back after failing to respond to Musk’s email demanding that employees commit to “extremely hard work” or quit with severance pay.
Sinead McSweeney, Twitter’s global vice president of public policy, obtained an injunction preventing Twitter from terminating her employment, according to Irish news reports last week. The company told the Irish High Court that its human resources department intended to start talks with McSweeney to resolve the dispute, the reports said.
In an affidavit in court, McSweeney said many employees at Twitter’s European headquarters in Dublin had expressed “concern and confusion” about Musk’s email.
McSweeney said she was forced to make a “completely artificial decision” that “put me in an impossible and exceedingly unfair and unjust position” to either accept a “unilateral amendment” to her terms of employment or be fired through a “sham termination.” to become.
After her lawyers received assurances from Twitter that her employment was still valid, she attempted to return to the Dublin office but found her access pass was not working. Security said they would have to check with HR to see if she was still an employee.
“I felt deeply humiliated, deeply confused and brought to tears in a public place,” she said.
