Elon Musk breaks silence on Twitter layoffs, says he had ‘no choice’

Elon Musk opened up about his move to fire thousands of Twitter's employees just days after he purchased the company.

On Saturday, November 5th, 2022, Musk tweeted out how he had ‘no choice’ over this move as the company was facing a substantial financial loss.

"Regarding g Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day," he wrote. "Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required."

According to The New York Times, sources close to the ordeal revealed that Musk planned to fire around half of Twitter's 7,500 employees. In light of the news, Tesla CEO took to the newly gained social media platform to explain his stance.

The employees were reportedly told that they should remain home and wait for an email about their future at the company.

“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” Musk tweeted on Friday, November 4th, 2022. “Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”

In response to the action, multiple employees moved quickly to file a class action lawsuit Thursday in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of Twitter workers, per NPR.

“The case alleges that Twitter is letting go of staff without adequate notice, in violation of California and federal employment law. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification act, or WARN, requires at least a 60-day notice before conducting mass layoffs,” stated the outlet.

However, Liss-Riordan then shared that employees would get three months' severance, which Musk later confirmed in the tweet.