Twitter sued by former staff as Elon Musk begins mass sackings

Twitter is facing a class action lawsuit from former employees who say they were not given enough notice under US federal law that they had lost their jobs, finding out they had been let go when they were locked out of their work accounts on Thursday.

In a company-wide memo, staff were informed on Thursday that they would receive an email to their personal email accounts if they were being fired as part of the mass sackings at the platform in which up to half of the company could go.

The lawsuit, brought on behalf of five Twitter employees so far, says one was fired on 1 November, while three were not informed at the time of filing but had been locked out of their email accounts.

The lawsuit was first reported by Bloomberg.

After finalising the $44bn purchase of Twitter, Musk fired several top Twitter executives, including the chief executive, Parag Agrawal, the finance chief, Ned Segal, and the legal affairs and policy chief, Vijaya Gadde.

Twitter employees shared messages of support with one another on the platform on Thursday, with many using the workplace hashtag #OneTeam. Once staff began noticing they had been locked out of their work accounts, they tweeted with the hashtag #LoveWhereYouWorked.