- A former Twitter HR boss says it didn’t pay $500 million in severance pay to laid-off workers.
- She stated in a lawsuit that staff got a lot much less severance pay than promised.
- Since taking management of the corporate, Elon Musk has laid off hundreds of staff.
A former HR boss at Twitter says that the corporate didn’t pay $500 million in severance pay owed to laid-off workers.
Courtney McMillian filed a lawsuit towards Twitter and proprietor Elon Musk in San Francisco on Wednesday, accusing the social media large of not accurately compensating staff when it laid them off.
The lawsuit particulars how, since a minimum of 2019, Twitter had calculated workers’s severance based mostly on a matrix that integrated elements resembling function, base pay, location, efficiency metrics, and cause for his or her termination.
Twitter acknowledged in its merger settlement from April 2022 – when Musk first provided to purchase the location – that for one 12 months from the closing of the merger it might proceed to supply workers with “severance funds and advantages … no much less favorable” than these out there earlier than the merger. Twitter’s then-CEO Parag Agrawal and then-Chairman Bret Taylor confirmed this to staff, per the lawsuit.
After taking management of the corporate, Musk started shedding hundreds of staff, which he stated was crucial to chop prices and keep away from chapter.
Per the lawsuit, Twitter provided the terminated staff “at most” three months of compensation, comprised of two months of non-working employment to adjust to the discover necessities of the WARN Act and one month of severance pay.
The lawsuit stated that was simply “a fraction” of what laid-off staff have been entitled to beneath the severance plan. For instance, senior staff have been entitled to 6 months’ base pay plus an additional week per full 12 months of service, whereas non-senior staff have been entitled to 2 months plus an additional week per 12 months of service, in keeping with a duplicate of the matrix hooked up to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says that Musk and fellow members of Twitter’s management did not pay laid-off workers the quantity they have been owed beneath the matrix “due to the expense concerned.”
The lawsuit asks the courtroom to order Twitter to pay again a minimum of $500 million it says the corporate owes in severance pay. McMillian’s legal professionals didn’t instantly reply to Insider’s request for touch upon the way it calculated this determine.
Twitter didn’t instantly reply to Insider’s request for remark, made exterior of normal working hours.
Since Musk took over, Twitter has been hit by a variety of lawsuits starting from distributors who stated their invoices hadn’t been paid to staff who stated they weren’t paid a proportion of their promised 2022 bonuses.
McMillian labored as Twitter’s head of complete rewards from August 2020 to summer season 2022, earlier than turning into its head of individuals expertise, per her LinkedIn. She seems to have been laid off in November, although her separation date was in January.
