Laid-off Twitter Africa employees have not received any severance pay or benefits for over seven months since their departure from the company, CNN reported on Monday.
The employees were offered a three months-worth severance payment, the cost of repatriating foreign staff, and legal expenses incurred during negotiations with the company in May, which they had accepted but not received.
“Although Twitter has eventually settled former staff in other locations, Africa staff have still been left in the lurch despite us eventually agreeing to specific negotiated terms,” said a former Twitter Africa employee.
The team reluctantly accepted the offer without benefits, which was less than what other laid-off employees in other areas received.
“Twitter was non-responsive until we agreed to the three months because we were all so stressed and exhausted and tired of the uncertainty, reluctant to take on the extra burdens of a court case so we felt we had no choice but to settle,” said another former employee.
The last communication from Twitter or its lawyers and the team was in May, after they agreed to the settlement, according to Carla Olympio, an attorney representing the former employees.
The team was laid off four days after the company opened a physical office in Accra in November, and was not the only team to be laid off, following Elon Musk’s acquisition. Twitter has been facing multiple lawsuits from former employees, where plaintiffs are claiming the company has failed to pay former staff what they are owed.
A former U.S. employee filed a proposed class action lawsuit claiming Twitter did not pay the full amount of severance benefits it promised in November. Twitter had promised senior employees severance of six months of base pay, in addition to one week for every year of service, as well as benefits.
“Unfortunately, it appears that after having unethically implemented their terminations in violation of their own promises and Ghana’s laws, dragging the negotiation process out for over half a year, now that we have come to the point of almost settlement, there has been complete silence from them for several weeks,” said Olympio.
Twitter did not negotiate with the Africa team until November, as they had been offered separation terms that are different from offers of European and North American staff.
