Second Lawsuit Against Twitter, Demanded IDR 7.5 Trillion LAYOFFS

JAKARTA - Twitter Inc was faced with a second lawsuit this July demanding a payment of at least US$500 million (Rp7.5 trillion) in the termination of employment allowance for a former employee (PHK). This lawsuit is part of a series of cases that emerged after Elon Musk acquired the social media company last year.

The class action lawsuit filed by former senior Twitter engineer Chris Woodfield in Delaware federal court also states that the company selects older employees to be laid off, this claim has never been filed in previous lawsuits.

Woodfield, who works for Twitter in Seattle, said the company repeatedly notified employees that it would receive two months of salaries and other benefits if they were laid off, but he and several other employees did not receive the money.

Twitter laid off more than half of the total employees as a cost-saving measure after Musk acquired the company in October last year.

Twitter currently does not have a media relationship department and the company is responding to an email requesting comment with automatic replies containing dirty emojis. The company has stated in response to other lawsuits that employees who have been laid off have been fully paid.

A similar lawsuit was filed last week in California's federal court claiming Twitter owed more than $500 million to former employees in layoffs allowances.

Twitter has not yet responded to the lawsuit, which states that the company violated federal law governing employee benefit programs by disobeying the terms of the layoff allowance plan that had been set before Musk acquired the company.

Woodfield's lawsuit accuses the company of violating contracts and committing fraud. Woodfield also stated that Twitter chose him to be laid off because he was an "older worker," although the lawsuit did not mention his age.

According to the lawsuit, Woodfield signed an agreement to resolve a legal dispute related to work requiring Twitter to pay an initial fee to allow individual cases to resume. He said he started the arbitration against Twitter earlier this year.

However, Woodfield stated that Twitter refused to pay the fee in its case, thus hampering the arbitration process. Similar claims were also filed by hundreds of former employees in separate cases earlier this year. Twitter has said the workers did not file the necessary documents.

Twitter was also accused in several separate lawsuits for disproportionately layoffs against women and workers with disabilities, did not provide advance notice of layoffs, and did not pay the promised bonuses to employees who were still working. The company has denied these claims.