Twitter profile page belonging to Elon Musk seen on an Apple iPhone mobile phone.
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After Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took over Twitter last week, the social media giant embarked on a steep downsizing. The cuts affected a total of 983 employees in California, its home state, according to three notice letters the company sent to regional authorities, which were obtained by CNBC.
The company’s new owner, CEO and sole director, Musk, wrote in a tweet on Friday afternoon: “When it comes to reducing the strength of Twitter, unfortunately there is no other choice when the company is losing more than $4 million a day. , which is 50% more than what is legally required.
Twitter’s downsizing has extended beyond California, and CNBC could not immediately confirm whether Musk’s description is accurate. A loss of $4 million per day for the company would represent an annual loss of approximately $1.5 billion.
The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act (WARN) requires employers to provide notice, usually within 60 days, of mass layoffs or plant closures in California.
According to letters from Twitter, shared by the California Employment Development Department, Twitter notified affected employees on November 4. Many of these workers described losing access to email and other internal Twitter systems on the night of Nov. 3 in public social media posts, including on Twitter itself.
This type of arrangement may serve as “payment in lieu of notice”, in California, depending on specific terms of employment. Permanent layoffs are expected to begin in January 2023, according to WARN notices.
In three different California WARN notification letters, signed by Twitter’s human resources department but no individual executives, the company wrote, “Affected employees will receive all wages and other benefits to which they are entitled up to the date of their dismissal”.
According to the WARN notice, Twitter cut about 784 workers in San Francisco, including nine executives or senior executives or managers, 147 mid-level employees who typically reported directly to senior executives, 592 other professionals, and 36 sales and administrative support staff combined. .
At the company’s satellite locations in Santa Monica, Twitter cut about 93 employees, including 17 mid-level civil servants and managers, 66 professionals and 10 combined sales and administrative support employees, according to the WARN notice.
At a San Jose office, Twitter laid off about 106 employees, including an executive or senior executive or manager, 18 mid-level civil servants and managers, 85 professionals and two administrative support staff, according to the WARN notice.
Twitter was sued Thursday by former employees in a proposed class action lawsuit filed by workers’ rights attorney Shannon Liss Riordan and others who feared employees weren’t given proper notice, in under federal and California law, that they would be terminated in the mass terminations.
Shannon Liss-Riordan, a labor rights attorney representing laid off Twitter employees, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.