Twitter laid off workers in Africa last year. They say they’ve been ignored

Garner’s former Twitter employees were fired in November without severance pay and haven’t heard from the company in three months, sources told CNBC.

Twitter has laid off nearly all employees at its sole office in Africa as part of new owner Elon Musk’s efforts to cut costs.

After announcing a global wave of layoffs, Musk tweeted in November that “unfortunately, we have no choice when the company is losing over $4M per day.”

“Everyone who quit got a three-month severance package, which was 50% more than required by law,” he added, though it was unclear which office and jurisdiction he was referring to.

Under Ghanaian employment law, redundancy wages must be paid to employees and should Give three months’ notice before layoffs. Employees in Twitter’s capital, Accra, were given less than a month, according to sources.

A former employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, told CNBC that the workers had made numerous claims for compensation during the negotiation process but wanted to draw a line before finally reaching a settlement.

“Twitter has been treating us badly since we were fired in November 2022. We didn’t even try to negotiate a severance package with us after the international news started covering it and we contacted the Ghana Labor Office,” another source said. , the source also requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.

“It was a tedious process and they denied some of our requests, which we thought was fair given the circumstances and the way we were treated.”

The employees, through their legal representatives, eventually accepted what they believed to be discounted severance packages in May, but have since remained mum on Twitter.

“We cooperated and accepted their offer so we could move on with our lives. However, since our lawyers contacted them to accept the offer in May, they have completely ignored us. For many of us, The fees owed have and have not been paid,” the second source added.

Twitter responded to CNBC’s request for comment via an automated reply.

The first source also told CNBC that “everyone is tired and frustrated.”

“This settlement wasn’t even what we were committed to, but we decided to accept it, and it’s been a struggle,” they said.

“There are people who haven’t got a job yet and have families to support, and this severance package will go a long way, so it’s sad to be delayed in this way.”

Musk said over the weekend that Twitter has lost nearly half of its ad revenue since it bought the social media platform for $44 billion last October and continues to generate negative cash flow while saddling it with massive debt.

The company also faces competition from new Meta platform Threads, which registered more than 100 million users in its first week of operation.

Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing, NYU Stern School of Business written on friday Twitter last week “became MySpace: an uninnovative social network being slowly euthanized by Meta.”

Galloway added: “The decline in income is related to, but not caused by, a shrinking workforce.”