We Protect Workers

Why is Twitter being sued for firing employees? 

Elon musk recently purchased Twitter for more than $40 billion. Many things have changed since he took over, including the workforce. One of the first things that he did was fire roughly 3,700 employees. Many other employees also quit as the workplace culture changed quickly. 

At first, it appeared that Musk did have the ability to do this. Most states in the U.S. use at-will employment laws. This means that workers can be fired at any time. Firings are common when a company changes hands and the new owner wants to create their own staff. Twitter is not the first or last company to do so. 

However, Musk is now being sued by a number of these employees. Why is this lawsuit starting simply because they were terminated?

Differences in mass layoffs

The problem is that Musk acted as if his employees, who were located all around the world, all fell under the same set of laws. But this is not true. Specifically, California has the WARN Act and the federal government also has the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. Under both of these, if an employer has more than 100 employees, they cannot conduct massive layoffs without providing two months of notice.

Since Musk generally fired all of the employees without warning, he’s now being sued – not for the firings themselves, but for the manner in which they were done. This is important to remember because a wrongful termination doesn’t only mean that the worker shouldn’t have been fired at all. It may just mean that they weren’t fired properly under the law. Those who believe this has happened to them need to know about all of their legal options

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