Elon Musk and X attain tentative settlement with laid-off Twitter staff

[ad_1] Elon Musk and his social media platform, X, reached a tentative settlement on Wednesday with former Twitter staff after a years-long authorized battle over severance pay. Former employees had sought $500m in a proposed class motion go well with towards the billionaire.

A court docket submitting launched on Wednesday acknowledged that each events had reached a settlement settlement in precept and requested {that a} scheduled 17 September listening to within the case be postponed whereas they labored to finalize a deal. The submitting didn't disclose any particulars of the tentative settlement and it's unclear what stage of compensation that former staff might obtain.

Former Twitter staff, led by Courtney McMillian and Ronald Cooper, alleged that the corporate did not appropriately pay 1000's of staff severance after conducting mass layoffs. When Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he reduce greater than 6,000 staff in an overhaul of the corporate’s workforce, slashing nearly the whole lot of departments comparable to content material moderation and communications. The layoffs led to a number of lawsuits, some ongoing, from employees and executives, and foreshadowed how Musk’s “division of presidency effectivity” would method its gutting of presidency businesses earlier this yr.

The lawsuit alleged that laid-off staff have been owed at the least two months of pay plus further compensation relying on their time labored on the firm, in accordance with a 2019 severance plan. As an alternative, Musk did not honor the contract and in some circumstances paid staff no compensation in any respect, in line with the go well with.

The tentative settlement is a turnaround from final yr, when a US district choose dismissed McMillian’s go well with in a authorized victory for Musk. Choose Trina Thompson dominated final July that the federal Worker Retirement Revenue Safety Act (Erisa) governing profit plans didn't cowl the previous staff’ claims, forcing the plaintiffs to attraction the choice to a better court docket.

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Musk’s $44bn acquisition of Twitter, which he subsequently rebranded to X, stays an extremely contentious enterprise deal. Twitter executives, together with former CEO Parag Agrawal, are additionally suing Musk in a separate, still-pending case over allegations that he did not pay them $128m in severance.