Elon Musk, the Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter, made an appearance at the Viva Technology conference in Paris on June 16, 2023, where he showcased his gestures and innovation.
Image Credit: Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
CNBC sources have revealed that former Twitter employees in Ghana, who were laid off in November, have not received their severance pay and have not been contacted by the company for three months.
In an effort to cut costs, Twitter, under the ownership of Elon Musk, terminated the majority of its Africa-based staff.
In November, Musk tweeted about the job cuts, stating that the company was losing over $4 million per day, leaving them with no choice but to downsize.
“Everyone who left was offered a severance package equivalent to three months’ salary, which exceeded the legal requirement,” he added, although it was unclear which office and jurisdiction he was referring to.
According to Ghanaian employment law, employees are entitled to redundancy payments and must be given three months’ notice before being let go. However, Twitter’s employees in Accra were only given less than a month’s notice, according to sources.
One former employee, speaking anonymously, stated that they requested compensation for the lack of notice and emotional distress as part of their settlement with Twitter, but these requests were rejected.
“Twitter has acted in bad faith since our layoffs in November 2022. They didn’t even attempt to negotiate a severance package until international news outlets started reporting on the situation, and only after we reached out to the Labour Office in Ghana,” said another source, also speaking anonymously.
After a lengthy legal process, the employees finally accepted a compromised severance offer in May. However, they have not received any communication from Twitter since then.
“We agreed to their offer just to move on with our lives. However, since our lawyer accepted the offer in May, they have completely ignored us. Many of us still haven’t been paid our owed expenses,” added the second source.
When contacted for comment, Twitter only provided an automated response to CNBC.
The first source also expressed frustration, stating, “Everyone is exhausted and fed up. This settlement isn’t even what we were promised, but we decided to accept it and now we’re struggling.”
“Some of us are still unemployed and have families to support, so this delayed severance payment is incredibly disheartening,” they said.
Musk recently revealed that since his acquisition of Twitter, the platform has experienced a significant drop in advertising revenue and continues to generate negative cash flow. Additionally, the company is burdened with a substantial debt.
Furthermore, Twitter faces competition from the new Meta platform Threads, which attracted over 100 million users in its first week.
Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at New York University, commented that Twitter is following the same path as MySpace, gradually losing innovation and being overshadowed by Meta.
Galloway added, “The decline in revenue is linked to the downsizing of the workforce, but it is not solely caused by it.”
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