Employees who were recently laid off from Twitter Africa’s offices are speaking out against the company, accusing them and owner Elon Musk of prejudice.
According to reports by CNN, the group of former employees has begun taking legal action, sending a letter to the company through a lawyer. In the letter, they’ve advocated for Twitter to respect the nation’s laws, calling on Ghana to have the social media site implement proper labor laws.
The former employees have also asked Twitter for fair pay with benefits that equal those of other company employees around the globe.
“It is clear that Twitter, Inc. under Mr. Elon Musk is either deliberately or recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana, is operating in bad faith and in a manner that seeks to silence and intimidate former employees into accepting any terms unilaterally thrown at them,” said the employees and their team through the letter per CNN.
Although the Ghanaian officers were opened just last year in an effort by the company to “immerse” itself in African topics of discussion, almost all of the staff- consisting of a little less than 20 employees- were let go two weeks ago.
In a tweet, Musk claimed that those employees that had been fired were given “three months of severance.” However, when speaking to news outlets like BBC, the employees from Ghana claimed that they were denied a redundancy payment given to workers who have lost their job.
A three-month notice was also denied to them as they were told abruptly that their final day as employees for the social media site would be on Dec. 4, 2022.
The layoff of the employees at Twitter Africa is part of a global initiative by Twitter to lay off employees. Since Musk has taken over the company, Twitter’s CEO, CFO and chief legal officer were dismissed along with thousands of other employees such as engineers.
According to a report released yesterday by tech magazine The Verge, the company has agreed to stop laying off workers after reducing their global staff from almost 7,400 employees to 2,700 employees.
The dismissals of employees are part of a series of controversial changes that have already been made to Twitter since Musk bought the site in late October as part of a $44 billion deal.
Since then, the site and its new owner have added Twitter Blue, a paid subscription for users to receive a “blue check mark” that has led to users impersonating different figures due to a lack of ID verification. Proposals are also being made to start charging users for any DMs sent to notable figures, according to the New York Times.
Suspended accounts that were taken off the platform for a variety of reasons, including anti-trans statements, have also been reinstated.
