Ex-Twitter Worker Wins Pay Fight With Musk, Memo Says

Elon Musk has lost a legal battle over unpaid severance pay to a former Twitter employee who was fired when he took over the social media platform in 2022, according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg News.

The settlement of the dispute, which was resolved through arbitration, comes nearly two years after Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion and immediately fired more than half of its staff.

The move sparked more than 2,000 complaints from former employees who claimed they were underpaid. Victory in Friday’s case could set a precedent for the thousands of former employees who have filed similar arbitration complaints.

“The arbitrator awarded our client the full severance package,” attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan said in Monday’s memo, which was obtained from two former Twitter employees who declined to be identified disclosing confidential information. “We are delighted with this development and hope it foreshadows more good news to come.”

Liss-Riordan declined to comment or disclose the arbitrator’s written ruling following her client’s closed-door proceedings with a private judge.

X did not respond to a request for comment.

In July, Musk and X Corp. — the name the billionaire chose to rebrand himself on Twitter — defeated a lawsuit that claimed at least $500 million in severance pay was owed to about 6,000 employees laid off under provisions of the federal Securities and Exchange Act pension income of employees.

In the memo, Liss-Riordan said 15 cases have had arbitration hearings and more rulings are expected in the next two months.

“Hopefully, if more rulings come, Twitter/X will be willing to come to the table and negotiate a deal for everyone,” she wrote.

Top photo: Tesla Inc. chief executive Elon Musk arrives in court during the SolarCity trial in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., Tuesday, July 13, 2021. Musk was cool but combative as he testified in a courtroom of Delaware that Tesla’s more than $2 billion purchase of SolarCity in 2016 was not a bailout of the struggling solar provider.

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