Twitter has been hit with allegations from 100 former employees affected by the company’s mass layoffs, including that it unfairly laid off more women than men, terminated employees who were actively on medical or parental leave, and broke severance pay promises.
According to a statement issued on Tuesday by attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, the allegations were included in the former employees’ demands for arbitration against the company.
Liss-Riordan is the same lawyer who has proposed four class action lawsuits against Twitter on behalf of former employees affected by Elon Musk’s takeover. The arbitration demands are intended to assist workers who are unable to participate in the litigation due to contracts they signed with the company.
Claims in arbitration demands are similar to those in lawsuits. According to the statement, some claim Musk made “unreasonable demands” on Twitter’s workforce in order to reduce its workforce.
“Twitter’s behavior since Musk took over has been incredibly egregious, and we will pursue every avenue to protect workers and extract compensation from Twitter,” Liss-Riordan said in a statement. She went on to say that her firm has heard from hundreds of former Twitter employees and that the “first wave” of arbitration demands has been filed.
“If necessary, we are prepared to fight them one by one on behalf of potentially thousands of employees,” she said.
Liss-Riordan previously filed three proposed class action lawsuits on behalf of laid-off female employees, disabled employees, and contractors. Another lawsuit was filed by a group of former employees accusing Twitter of breach of contract for allegedly failing to follow through on promises to allow remote work and provide consistent severance benefits following the acquisition.
Twitter, which recently laid off a large portion of its communications staff, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the arbitration demands. Twitter has denied the breach of contract allegations in the lawsuit filed by former employees regarding remote work and severance, but it has not responded to the claims in the three other lawsuits.
In addition, Liss-Riordan has filed three complaints with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of employees affected by the layoffs.
Former employees’ claims come after Twitter laid off roughly half of its workforce in a mass layoff last month, shortly after Musk’s takeover. Musk later fired hundreds of additional employees, including by imposing an ultimatum that they work “extremely hardcore” or leave the company.
Last week, a judge ruled in favor of the former employees suing Twitter, ordering the company to notify all laid-off employees of the pending lawsuits before requiring them to sign severance agreements waiving their rights to litigation.
