Just a week after Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022 for the equivalent of almost 40 billion euros, the eccentric tech billionaire fired more than half of the short message service’s workforce. This triggered a series of complaints and legal disputes because several thousand people felt cheated out of money. Now an arbitration court has upheld a claim and ordered Musk to pay the entire severance payment. This is according to a memo that the news site Bloomberg News The resolution of the dispute, which was settled through arbitration, came almost two years after the Twitter takeover and the associated mass layoffs. “The arbitrator has awarded our client full compensation,” said attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan in a statement dated September 23, 2024. The exact amount is not known. “We are pleased with this development and hope it will be a foretaste of more good news to come.” The lawyer thus suggests that the victory could serve as a precedent for thousands of former Twitter employees who have filed similar arbitration complaints. “We hope that Twitter/X will be willing to sit down at the negotiating table and negotiate a settlement for everyone if further judgments are made,” said Liss-Riordan. X, as Twitter is now called, has not yet responded to a request for comment.
