Twitter, which has its UK offices in Manchester and London, has begun mass layoffs of its global workforce.
It’s anticipated that the firm, which is now owned by Elon Musk, will cut its staff numbers of around 8000, by almost half.
Today staff in the North of England have used other social media networks to share support and blue heart emojis.
“Employees are having their access to Slack and other internal tools shut off,” wrote one staff member in the North West.
“It turns out many of them will find out before the coin-flip layoff email tomorrow morning.”
Twitter sent an internal memo to staff detailing how they would find out if they were still employed:
“Team, In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday. We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.
“Given the nature of our distributed workforce and our desire to inform impacted individuals as quickly as possible, communications for this process will take place via email. By 9AM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, everyone will receive an individual email with the subject line: Your Role at Twitter. Please check your email, including your spam folder. – If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email. – If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email. – If you do not receive an email from twitter-hr@ by 5PM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, please email peoplequestions@twitter.com.
“To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended. If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home. We acknowledge this is an incredibly challenging experience to go through, whether or not you are impacted. Thank you for continuing to adhere to Twitter policies that prohibit you from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere. We are grateful for your contributions to Twitter and for your patience as we move through this process. Thank you.”
A class action suit has already been filed by employees, which claim that the process is happening in violation of Californian and federal law. That requires at least 60 days notice.
Bloomberg reports that the attorney who filed the complaint is Shannon Liss-Riordan, who sued Musk’s Tesla after he laid off 10% of its workforce earlier this year.
“We filed this lawsuit tonight in an attempt the make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights,” she stated.
This afternoon Mike Clancy, General Secretary of the Prospect union in the UK said:
“Twitter is treating its people appallingly.
“These are people who have invested their time, effort and enthusiasm in building the platform, which risks being thrown away.
“The government must make clear to Twitter’s new owners that we won’t accept a digital P&O and that no-one is above the law in the UK, including Big Tech barons. That must include making sure UK staff’s full employment rights are properly protected.
“We are supporting our members at Twitter and will be working with them to defend them and their livelihoods.
“As the union for tech workers, Prospect will be monitoring this situation closely on behalf of our members.”
