at Twitter events rolled over backwards last week. Immediately after taking over the short message service, the new owner fired Elon Musk (51) Twitter management. A little later, the multi-billionaire started doing it, around half of his 7,500 employees dismissed by email. There is talk of chaotic and anonymous mass layoffs. “Looks like I’m not employed anymore. I just got remotely logged out of my work laptop,” one employee tweeted Thursday.
Even before the terminations arrived in the mailboxes and the corresponding insider reports made the rounds, the first Twitter employees had already filed a preventive class action lawsuit against Twitter on Thursday. The accusation: The new Twitter boss is said to have not sufficiently announced the layoffs.
They are represented by top US attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan (53). The well-known employment lawyer has already brought numerous US tech giants to their knees and is also known by the name “Sledgehammer Shannon” (“Sledgehammer Shannon
“) known. So who is the woman who is now taking on the richest man in the world?
The champion of workers’ rights
Liss-Riordan is recognized as one of the leading labor rights attorneys in the United States. Best Lawyers in America called her “the reigning plaintiff champion” in 2013. The Harvard graduate has had groundbreaking success in representing workers in disputes over tips, with workers misclassified as freelancers, and with low-wage earners who are denied overtime, minimum wages, and other wage protections, according to the website of her Boston law firm, Lichten & Liss-Riordan. She is known as a “hard-headed class-action attorney” who has made a name for herself with her multi-million dollar victories on behalf of strippers, waitstaff, drivers and other workers.
The 53-year-old also plays on the political stage. She has twice run for political office, in the 2019 Democratic primary for the US Senate and this year for the office of Attorney General for Massachusetts – both times without success. She was also supported by Senator Elizabeth Warren (73).
After Liss-Riordan sued Uber, Lyft and other dispatchers in 2013, the wrote Wall Street Journal
about the US attorney, Liss-Riordan is one of the most influential and controversial personalities in the Silicon Valley become. In the case of Uber, she argued on behalf of more than 100,000 Massachusetts and California drivers that Uber had unlawfully classified the drivers as freelancers, not employees. This would deny those affected reimbursement for their expenses and other protective measures. Uber profits on the backs of its workers, according to the class action lawsuit. Her recommendation to agree on a settlement of more than 100 million US dollars with Uber was later considered controversial. Competing lawyers warned of just that. Ultimately, she reached a final settlement of $20 million in 2019.
Special field: age discrimination, freelancers
The top lawyer has already won lawsuits against Starbucks and FedEx, among others. In 2012, she netted a $14.1 million win against the coffeehouse chain for Starbucks baristas in Massachusetts. In a series of cases beginning in 2005, Liss-Riordan won million-dollar settlements for the courier and logistics company’s drivers who were wrongly treated as contractors and expected to pay for their vans and gas pay yourself.
Liss-Riordan is also known for her age discrimination lawsuit against the IT and consulting company IBM. According to internal emails, IBM managers are said to have made disparaging remarks about older employees and, for example, referred to them as “Dino Babies” – in order to get rid of them. “Their goal was to lay off older employees to replace them with younger ones,” Liss-Riordan said earlier this year. The lawyer represents more than 1000 former IBM employees against the US company. The procedure is still ongoing.
Twitter and Tesla: double whammy for Musk
Liss-Riorden is no stranger to Twitter’s new autocrat Musk. Because the US attorney also sued the multi-billionaire’s electric car maker Tesla this year, in a similar case to Twitter. Musk fired 10 percent of Tesla’s workforce in June. In the end, Musk won the case. A federal judge ordered affected employees to pursue their claims in private arbitration instead of a public trial.
In the Twitter case, Liss-Riorden filed the lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco on Thursday according to media reports
filed on behalf of an employee who was fired and three others who were locked out of their work accounts. If employees are not given advance notice and do not receive severance pay, it is against US and California law for them to be fired. According to the so-called WARN Act, companies with 100 or more employees are obliged to give 60 days’ notice of mass layoffs. Employers can pay workers severance pay for 60 days instead of dismissal. Twitter boss Musk is said to have violated this.
“We filed this case pre-emptively to ensure that such a violation does not happen again,” Liss-Riorden said on Friday. “We were very concerned that he would fire the employees in violation of federal and state law by failing to notify them and provide them with the severance and pay they are due, so we pre-emptively filed this lawsuit last night to make sure that the employees are informed and know their rights.”
Musk: Every layoff should get severance pay
From Liss-Riorden’s point of view, the lawyer has already achieved a small success with her lawsuit. She was “delighted” to learn that at least some of the laid-off employees will continue to be paid through January 4. Less than half a day after filing the lawsuit, Musk was “struggling to comply with the law.” On Friday afternoon, the Twitter boss declared that every employee who was laid off would receive three months’ salary in severance pay.
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At the same time, there are indications that other employees who feel unfairly treated by Musk’s actions are taking legal action. Attorney Lisa Bloom said she received messages from former Twitter employees saying, “Mr Musk, the storm is coming”.