Two female employees who lost their jobs at Twitter when Elon Musk took over are suing the firm in a US court, saying that the sudden mass layoffs unfairly impacted female workers.
Days after Musk, the richest man in the world, paid $44 billion to purchase the social media platform, a mass layoff started. Twitter informed about half of employees on November 4 that they no longer have a job but would get three months severance.
In response to the widespread layoffs, which two women claim were directed specifically at them, they have now filed a lawsuit. The lawsuit filed in a San Francisco federal court alleges that 57% of female employees were laid off, compared to fewer than half of men, despite Twitter employing more men overall before the layoffs.
The lawsuit alleges that also disproportionately harmed women, “who are more often caregivers for children and other family members, and thus not able to comply with such demands,” AP reported.
Carolina Bernal Strifling and Willow Wren Turkal, two former employees, brought the lawsuit on behalf of other female employees in a similar situation.
“The mass termination of employees at Twitter has impacted female employees to a much greater extent than male employees – and to a highly statistically significant degree,” Liss-Riordan wrote.
Elon Musk has also made a number of openly discriminatory comments about women, which she said “further confirms that the mass termination’s greater impact on female employees was the result of discrimination.”
The layoffs continued throughout November as Elon Musk fired engineers who questioned or criticised him and gave all remaining employees the choice to resign with severance or sign a form pledging “extremely hardcore” work, long hours and dedication to Twitter’s new direction. Following the ultimatum, many more people resigned.
