Twitter sued again over severance pay, bias during layoffs: Report – News18

Twitter Inc on Tuesday filed a second lawsuit this month claiming it owes former employees at least $500 million in severance pay, in a series of cases stemming from Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media company. is the latest.

The proposed class action filed in Delaware federal court by former Twitter senior engineer Chris Woodfield also alleges that the company targeted older workers for layoffs, a claim that has not been made in other pending cases.

Woodfield, who works for Twitter out of Seattle, says the company repeatedly told employees they would get two months’ salary and other payments if they were fired, but he and other employees have not received the money. .

Twitter laid off more than half its staff as a cost-cutting measure after Musk acquired the company last October.

Twitter no longer has a media relations department and the company responded to an email seeking comment with an automated response that included a poop emoji. The company has said in response to other lawsuits that the fired employees have been paid in full.

A similar lawsuit was filed in California federal court last week, claiming Twitter owes former employees more than $500 million.

Twitter has not responded to a lawsuit that claims it violated a federal law regulating employee benefit plans by failing to comply with the terms of a severance plan established before Musk acquired the company. .

Woodfield’s lawsuit accuses the company of breach of contract and fraud. Woodfield also claims that Twitter targeted him for his firing because he was an “older employee”, although his age is not specified in the complaint.

According to the lawsuit, Woodfield signed an agreement to arbitrate work-related legal disputes, requiring Twitter to pay an initial fee to allow the individual cases to proceed. He says he initiated arbitration against Twitter earlier this year.

But Woodfield claims Twitter has refused to pay fees in his case, preventing it from moving forward. The claim was made by hundreds of former employees in a separate case earlier this year. Twitter has said that those workers did not submit the necessary paperwork.

Twitter has also been accused in several separate lawsuits of disproportionately firing women and workers with disabilities, failing to provide advance notice of layoffs, and not paying promised bonuses to its remaining employees. The company has denied those claims.

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – reuters,