Since taking over twitter in late October, Elon Musk has been on a firing spree, in an attempt to cut down the company’s 7000 staff to 3500. This of course meant that entire markets would be affected, and no twitter employee is safe.
In Africa, Twitter had only one base of operation, which was an office in Accra Ghana, operated by a 12 person team.
Given the already small number of employees, it made very little sense that the Tesla founder would fire all but 1 of the staff members in the only twitter headquarter on the entire African plain.
Regardless of his reasons, the former Ghanaian employees are standing up to Elon, stating that they must get the same 3 months severance package afforded to their American and European counterparts.
They have also called on their government to compel Twitter to comply with Ghana’s redundancy laws, which affords employees a fair negotiation and redundancy pay.
According to a report by CNN, “laid-off employees at Twitter’s Africa headquarters are accusing Twitter of “deliberately and recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana” and trying to “silence and intimidate” them after they were fired.
The team has hired a lawyer and sent a letter to the company demanding it comply with the West African nation’s labor laws, provide them with additional severance pay and other relevant benefits, in line with what other Twitter employees will receive.”
The former Ghanaian twitter staff issued a letter where they detailed their grievances with the world’s richest man and stated their demands. The letter reads in part; “it is clear that Twitter, Inc. under Mr Elon Musk is either deliberately or recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana, is operating in bad faith and in a manner that seeks to silence and intimidate former employees into accepting any terms unilaterally thrown at them.”
The report by CNN concludes that the former Ghanaian Twitter staff were not offered severance pay, which they say is “required by Ghana’s labor laws, based on their employment contracts. They also claim they were not informed about the next steps — unlike employees in the United States and Europe — until a day after CNN reported on their situation.”
So far, the Ghanaian staff have hired a lawyer to take Elon to court. They’ve noted that they are unable to negotiate with Twitter because so far Twitter has denied them access to communicate, because their emails keep bouncing back.
Source: PulseGhana