Twitter laid off most of its workers in Africa last year. They say they've been ignored and left without severance

cnbc.com:

Former Twitter employees in Ghana, who were laid off in November, have been left without severance pay and have not heard from the company for three months, sources told CNBC.

As part of new owner Elon Musk's cost-cutting efforts, Twitter fired nearly all of the staff at its only office in Africa.

Following the announcement of the wave of global job cuts, Musk tweeted in November that «unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day.»

«Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required,» he added, though it was unclear to which office and jurisdiction he was referring.

Under Ghanaian employment law, staff must be paid redundancy and should be granted three months' notice before they are made redundant. Twitter's workers in the capital Accra were given less than a month, according to the sources.

One former employee, who wished to remain anonymous due to sensitive nature of situation, told CNBC Monday that the workers requested compensation in lieu of notice and emotional distress damages as part of the negotiated settlement with Twitter, but both were rejected.

«Twitter has dealt with us in bad faith since we were laid off in November 2022. There was no attempt to even negotiate a severance with us until international news started to report on this, and after we had approached the Labour Office in Ghana,» said another source, who also spoke to CNBC on condition of anonymity due to sensitive nature of situation.

«It's been a tedious process and they rejected some of our requests, which we thought were fair given the circumstances and how we've been treated.»

Through their legal representative, the employees eventually reached out to accept what they saw as a