Former employees of Twitter will receive severance pay after months of waiting

The ex-employees who left Twitter in November 2022 received severance agreements on January 8, 2023. Twitter cut over half of its 7,500 employees in the beginning of November 2022. Elon Musk, the new CEO, said that all departing employees received three months of severance pay, which is 50% more than what is needed by law.

However, the ex-employees claim that they were only given their final two months’ pay through January 4th (the formal date of their termination), and that they were forced to wait to get a post-termination severance payout.

Despite Musk’s assurance that they would receive an extra month of pay as severance, the employees contend that given what Twitter had already agreed to pay prior to Musk’s takeover, they are actually owed more. Bonuses, stock vesting, and other benefits that might reach tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for each employee were also meant to be included in the severance package.

The severance agreements that Twitter is offering are actually “settlement agreements,” according to Lisa Bloom, a principal attorney at The Bloom Firm in Los Angeles who is currently representing former Twitter employees. These agreements “SILENCE WORKERS FOR LIFE” and require them to give up significant legal rights.