LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Elon Musk faces a lawsuit attempting to stop him firing half the workers at his newly-acquired Twitter, according to reports on Friday.
All of Twitter's estimated workforce of 7,000 were awaiting their fate as the billionaire prepared to wield the axe, but a class-action lawsuit was filed on Thursday in San Francisco federal court, arguing that the company is violating federal and California law by not giving enough notice.

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

The case cited a similar situation with sackings at Musk's other company, Tesla, where the company sought to obtain full release from its obligations by offering severance of one or two weeks' pay instead.

"Plaintiffs here are reasonably concerned that, absent court intervention, Twitter will engage in similar behaviour and seek releases from laid-off employees without informing them of their rights or the pendency of this case," the filing stated.

The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act restricts large companies from mounting mass layoffs without at least 60 days of advance notice.

"We filed this lawsuit tonight in an attempt the make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights," Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who filed Thursday's complaint, told Bloomberg.

Employees were set to receive an email on Friday in Musk's own version of Russian roulette - those lucky enough to keep their jobs would be notified via their work account, those shown the metaphorical door receiving notice through their personal email, according to multiple media reports on Friday.

The email to Twitter's employees stated that its offices would be temporarily closed and all badge access suspended in order "to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data".

Employees that have been sacked have already started sharing stories of being locked out of their company laptops.

Musk fired several Twitter executives immediately upon taking control of the company last week, including chief executive, Parag Agrawal, finance chief, Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief, Vijaya Gadde.

The scorched-earth job cutting Musk's is part of a desperate attempt by Musk to turn a profit at the platform for which he, by his own admission overpaid $44bn.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com

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