Twitter engineer says he was fired for serving to coworkers who confronted layoffs

A former Twitter Inc engineer has accused the corporate of firing him days after it was acquired by Elon Musk as a result of he developed a device to permit staff to avoid wasting necessary paperwork in anticipation of mass layoffs.

The engineer, Emmanuel Cornet, filed a grievance with the US Nationwide Labor Relations Board on Monday claiming he was engaged in protected exercise when he shared the software program on an inside Twitter messaging channel.

“Protected actions” are actions that staff can take with out worry of employer retaliation beneath US labor regulation.

Twitter didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the grievance.

Cornet, who was based mostly in San Francisco, mentioned within the grievance that he was fired on Nov. 1, a couple of days earlier than Twitter started shedding about half of its 7,500 staff in a cost-cutting bid by Musk, the world’s richest particular person.

Cornet and 4 different Twitter staff had filed a lawsuit in California federal court docket on Friday accusing the social media firm of violating federal and California legal guidelines requiring employers to present 60 days’ discover earlier than participating in mass layoffs.

Musk in a collection of tweets on Friday mentioned Twitter staff who have been laid off have been provided 90 days of severance pay, which might fulfill Twitter’s obligations beneath the discover legal guidelines.

Cornet within the grievance mentioned that late final month, amid rumors of mass layoffs at Twitter, he developed a Google Chrome extension to permit staff to obtain emails from their Twitter accounts. That may guarantee staff might save necessary paperwork corresponding to statements reflecting their inventory in Twitter, efficiency evaluations, and different human useful resource paperwork, he mentioned.

Cornet says he was fired on the identical day that he printed the extension and posted a hyperlink to it on an inside Twitter messaging channel. Twitter eliminated the hyperlink later that day, in accordance with the grievance.

If the NLRB points a grievance towards Twitter and finally guidelines for Cornet, it might order that he be reinstated with backpay and that the corporate publish a discover informing staff of their rights beneath federal labor regulation.