Twitter, began notifying employees affected by a far-reaching round of job cuts, and some learned they’ll be paid for two months.
The week after Elon Musk took over and promised sweeping changes, workers around the world were checking two email addresses to find out if they still have a job, according to an internal memo sent to employees and seen by Bloomberg.
An email to their work account means they’ve been retained. A letter in their personal inbox means they’ve been fired.
Twitter closes offices
Twitter temporarily closed offices and suspended badge access “to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data,” the memo said.
Musk plans to eliminate half of Twitter’s workforce to slash costs at the social media platform he acquired for $44 billion last month, people with knowledge of the matter have said.
The company must also find ways to cope with interest costs on a massive debt pile.
The speed of the changes is having repercussions. Twitter has already been sued for not giving proper notice of the plan to eliminate about 3,700 jobs.
Some advertisers are also wary of Musk’s plans to reexamine Twitter’s content moderation policy. Volkswagen AG, Europe’s largest carmaker, joined Pfizer Inc. and General Mills Inc. in temporarily pausing advertising on the platform.
A coalition called #StopToxicTwitter, made up of more than 60 civil rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and Accountable Tech, said on Friday it plans to escalate calls to Twitter advertisers that they stop buying ad space on the platform in the wake of Musk’s sweeping layoffs.
“We are witnessing the real-time destruction of one of the world’s most powerful communication systems,” said Jessica J. González, co-CEO of Free Press, one of the advocacy groups in the coalition.
“Elon Musk is an erratic billionaire who’s dangerously unqualified to run Twitter.” Gonzales said the groups were stepping up their campaign in response to Musk’s failure to uphold his commitment to take the measures that would prevent Twitter from becoming a superspreader of racism and disenfranchisement.
Twitter was sued over Musk’s plan to eliminate jobs at the social-media platform, which workers say the company is doing without enough notice in violation of federal and California law. A class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday in San Francisco federal court.
Color Of Change President Rashad Robinson criticized Musk for reportedly dismantling employee resource groups like Twitter Women and Blackbirds, a group for Black employees at the social media company.
The groups were “critical,” Robinson said, “not just for the employees, but for the communities they are connected to.”
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