Elon Musk and the great Twitter jobs bloodbath
Nervous UK staff wait on email telling them if they are among 3,700 sacked worldwide
HUNDREDS of UK workers could be among thousands sacked in Elon Musk’s global jobs cull, after many woke up yesterday to find their work laptops had been wiped.
The social media giant’s offices in London were locked last night with workers told to stay at home until next week.
Nervous employees were expecting to receive an email with the subject ‘Your role at Twitter’ by 4pm. The emails were due to arrive in their personal inboxes after members of staff reported being logged out of their work accounts and locked out of laptops.
The company closed its offices in Piccadilly Circus and Manchester for all employees yesterday.
Mr Musk is getting rid of 3,700 workers worldwide in a cost-cutting drive following his £38billion takeover last week. He has already purged a slew of senior executives.
Former employees in the US are taking Twitter to court, saying the sackings were carried out without enough notice, in violation of federal and state law.
And union bosses here have described the redundancies as a ‘digital P&O’, in reference to the ferry operator’s notorious sudden firing of 800 workers earlier this year – some via online Zoom calls.
Mike Clancy, general secretary of Prospect, which represents tech workers, said: ‘Twitter is treating its people appallingly. The Government must make clear to Twitter’s new owners that we won’t accept a digital P&O and that no one is above the law in the UK, including big tech barons.’
Some UK workers were asleep when their work laptops were ‘remotely wiped’ and their access to work emails and the messaging service Slack stopped.
Chris Younie, who works for Twitter in entertainment partnerships, tweeted: ‘Well this isn’t looking promising. Can’t log into emails. Mac won’t turn on. But so grateful this is happening at 3am. Really appreciate the thoughtfulness on the timing front, guys...’
Simon Balmain, a senior community manager for the platform in the UK, said he believed he had been laid off after being logged out of his laptop and Slack.
‘Everyone got an email saying that there was going to be a large reduction in headcount, and then around an hour later, folks started getting their laptops remotely wiped and access to Slack and Gmail revoked,’ he told the BBC.
‘Most UK folks are probably asleep and don’t know yet. I was working mostly Los Angeles hours because of the projects I was on, so I was awake when it happened.’
Another ex-employee, who gave his name as James and said he worked in curation partnerships, wrote: ‘I feel sorry for anyone that didn’t get fired tbh. Elon will run those left into the ground with his hair-brained ideas. Any kind of Twitter we knew before is dead.’
Rachel Bonn, who worked in marketing in San Francisco, wrote: ‘Last Thursday in the SF office, really the last day Twitter was Twitter. Eight months pregnant and have a nine-month-old. Just got cut off from laptop access.’
Twitter told UK staff in a memo its offices will be temporarily closed and all staff badge access suspended ‘to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data’.
‘If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home,’ it added. ‘In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday. We recognise that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter.’
‘Treating people appallingly’