Recently 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 of Ghanaian employees have 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.
In a letter to Ghana's Chief Labour Officer, the workers petitioned the Ghanaian government to compel Twitter to “adhere to the laws of Ghana on redundancy and offer the employees a fair and just negotiation and redundancy pay,”
“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 letter states.
Twitter laid off all but one of the African employees just four days after the company opened a physical office in the capital Accra following Musk’s takeover.
But the staff of about a dozen people 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 in the company unlike employees in the United States and Europe.
In the letter to Twitter Ghana Ltd, the African employees rejected a “Ghana Mutual Separation Agreement” from Twitter, which they say was sent to their personal emails offering final pay that the company claims to have been arrived at after a negotiation.
Several members of the team in a statement to CNN said there was no such negotiation on severance pay.
They claim it was below what is required by law and contradicts what Musk tweeted that departing employees would receive.