Employees Sue Elon Musk’s Twitter Over Unpaid Bonuses

Twitter owner Elon Musk had promised to pay at least 50 per cent of the Twitter employees’ target amounts as bonuses last year

Outlook Business Desk

Updated on: 22 June 2023 3:29 pm

Twitter CEO Elon Musk

Twitter owner Elon Musk has been sued by the social media company’s employees alleging that he has refused to pay their 2022 bonuses. The former Twitter CEO had promised to pay at least 50 per cent of the Twitter employees’ target amounts as bonuses last year.

According to a Bloomberg report, the class-action lawsuit is filed by Mark Shobinger who was working as Twitter’s senior director of compensation until last month. Shobinger said that he filed the lawsuit on behalf of current and former Twitter employees who haven’t received their promised bonuses.

Earlier, Twitter used to pay bonuses to their employees annually. However, employees who were working in the company until recently were refused to be pad after Musk took over in October 2022.

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“Twitter refused to pay employees who remained employed by the company in the first quarter of 2023 any bonus,” Shobinger said in the report.

According to the lawsuit, the microblogging platform has traditionally fixed a target for its bonus plan, which is funded throughout the year and pays out at least 50 per cent of the target annually.

“Both before and after Musk’s acquisition was completed in October 2022, Twitter’s management continuously promised the company’s employees, including the plaintiff, that their annual bonus for 2022 would be paid under the Bonus Plan,” employees said in the lawsuit.

Twitter is facing financial issues since the Musk takeover. Recently, the social media company even had to vacate offices in Colorado over unpaid rent for months. Twitter is also being evicted from its Boulder office because of the unpaid rent since March.

Twitter has lost more than half of its advertising revenue as several brands have backed out of Twitter as they have lost trust and its ability to remove harmful content from the platform including violent, hateful and pornographic content, according to a report by New York Times.

The company’s workforce has been slashed to 75 per cent due to mass layoffs and voluntary resignations.