After Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took over Twitter last week, the social networking giant began to lay off staff significantly. The layoffs affect a total of 983 employees in its home state of California, according to three notices the company sent to regional authorities, obtained by CNBC.
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Musk, the new owner, CEO, and sole director of Twitter Inc. wrote in a tweet on Friday: “Regarding the layoffs at Twitter, unfortunately, when the company is losing more than $4 million a day, there is no choice. Each Everyone who leaves the job gets three months of severance pay, which is 50% more than the law requires.”
In the case of large-scale layoffs or factory closures in California, the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires employers to give advance notice, generally within 60 days.
Twitter notified affected employees on Nov. 4, according to the Twitter letter shared by the California Employment Development Department. Many of those employees described losing access to email and other internal Twitter systems overnight on Nov. 3 in public posts on social media.
Permanent layoffs are expected to begin in January 2023, according to the WARN notice. In three separate California WARN notification letters signed by Twitter’s Human Resources Department, the company wrote: “Affected employees will be paid all wages and other benefits to which they are entitled until the termination date.”
According to the WARN notice, the specific layoffs include 784 layoffs in the San Francisco office, 106 layoffs in San Jose, and 93 layoffs in Santa Monica.
As of June 30, 2013, shortly before Twitter went public, the company had about 2,000 employees, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). By the end of last year, the company had more than 7,500 full-time employees. According to previous reports by multiple media, Twitter’s large-scale layoffs will cut 50% of jobs worldwide.
