Twitter owes ex-employees $500 million in severance, lawsuit claims

Woodfield, who worked for Twitter out of Seattle, says the company repeatedly told employees that they would receive two months’ salary and other payouts if they were laid off, but that he and other workers have not received the money. He has accused Twitter of breach of contract and fraud.

According to the lawsuit, Woodfield signed an agreement to arbitrate work-related legal disputes that require Twitter to pay the initial fees to allow individual cases to proceed. He says that he initiated an arbitration against Twitter earlier this year.

But Woodfield claims Twitter has refused to pay the fee in his case, blocking it from going forward. That claim was made by hundreds of ex-employees in a separate case earlier this year.

Twitter has not responded to that lawsuit, which claims it violated a federal law regulating employee benefit plans by failing to abide by the terms of a severance plan established before Musk acquired the company.

Twitter laid off more than half of its workforce as a cost-cutting measure after Elon Musk acquired the company last October. The company has been accused in several separate lawsuits of disproportionately laying off women and workers with disabilities, failing to give advance notice of layoffs, and not paying promised bonuses to its remaining employees. Twitter has denied those claims.

Updated: 19 Jul 2023, 07:57 AM IST