Twitter CEO Elon Musk has locked out all 7,500 employees from their offices and from their remote work accounts as he prepares mass layoffs on what is being called ‘black Friday’ by the media.
Reports noted that Musk is preparing to layoff at least half of those workers — as many as 3,700 staff globally — as he attempts to make the company profitable following his $44 billion takeover last month.
Now, staff are waiting anxiously for an email entitled “Your role at Twitter,” which is supposed to drop by noon eastern time for New York personnel, the UK’s Daily Mail reports. Those in London will learn their fate by 4 p.m. local time.
“Members of staff have reported being logged out of their work accounts and locked out of laptops while the company sealed offices for all of its employees,” the outlet reported, adding that some staffers have already taken legal action.
“Sacked workers are suing Musk for not giving enough notice of the mass job cuts, with some posting sentimental messages to the platform after being told they were to be unemployed,” DailyMail.com noted further.
Musk announced on Thursday in an email to all employees he would be closing the offices in the U.S. and the UK for the day on Friday as he prepared to make his cuts. All staff badge access has also been cut “to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data,” the company noted.
“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,” the email began.
“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,” the email continued, adding: “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.”
Bloomberg News reported Friday that firing employees without giving adequate notice is a violation of California and federal law. The outlet cited a class-action lawsuit that had been filed in federal court in San Francisco, where Twitter’s HQ is located.
Some former employees took to social media — including Twitter — to say their farewells and to take potshots at Musk.
“Honestly happy to be laid off but the veil of @elonmusk is pierced,” one user name Kushal Dave wrote. “As messy as Twitter was pre-elon, it is a veritable clowntown of politics and toadyism and psychological abuse now. Afraid to get in my Tesla with what I learned this week.”
“Looks like I’m unemployed y’all. Just got remotely logged out of my work laptop and removed from Slack. #OneTeam forever. Loved you all so much. So sad it had to end this way,” wrote Simon Balmain, whose profile said he is a “former Senior Community Manager, wrote. He said he received an email that said mass layoffs were coming “and then around an hour later, folks started getting their laptops remotely wiped and access to Slack and Gmail revoked.”
“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened,” wrote another former employee.
