A group of 43 former employees at Twitter’s UK operation have sought legal advice over their recent redundancies, claiming that their severance terms were not honoured and the process was a ‘sham’.
The former employees - who are being represented by London-based Winckworth Sherwood - accuse the company of "unlawful, unfair and completely unacceptable treatment".
The law firm says that - despite redundancies of more than 100 people requiring a 45-day consultation period so that terms might be negotiated - the employees were treated as if they had already been dismissed when hearing of their redundancy on 18th November 2022.
The workers were allegedly immediately cut off from internal company systems, access to laptops and offices, which effectively suspended them from their jobs when Twitter had no contractual right to do so - and whilst also making it impossible for employee representatives to assist their colleagues.
Twitter had justified the redundancies as a cost cutting exercise but Winckworth argue whether the redundancies were genuine, given the fact Twitter was still highlighting ‘future opportunities’ in London on the career section of its corporate website. Nonetheless, some employees were contacted on 23rd December 2022 insisting they respond to invitations about individual consultations on redundancy and even though, it is alleged, some had been given deadlines to accept settlement terms before their consultations.
In addition, Winckworth claim that the UK Twitter staff who were let go were offered two months of gross basic salary, in addition to an extra two weeks' gross basic salary for each year of employment - which differed from the company's previous severance terms of 16 weeks basic pay - offered by Meta who had owned the company before Elon Musk took over.
These redundancies are the latest since Musk took over Twitter in a $44bn (£36bn) deal in late October. He is estimated to have laid off around 3,500 employees, or about half the company's workforce since the takeover. This has led to four class action lawsuits and 200 legal complaints in the US from affected workers.
