Employees who were recently laid off at the Twitter office in Africa claim that the company “deliberately and recklessly flouted the laws of Ghana” and tried to “silence and intimidate” them after they were let go.
The group of Ghanaian workers have engaged a lawyer and written a letter to the firm requesting that it adhere to the labour rules of the West African country, give them more severance, and offer them other perks consistent with those that other Twitter employees will receive.
The employees requested that Twitter “adhere to the rules of Ghana on redundancy and grant the employees a fair and just negotiation and redundancy pay” in a letter to Ghana’s Chief Labour Officer.
“It is clear that Twitter, Inc. under Mr Elon Musk is either deliberately or recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana, is operating in bad faith and in a manner that seeks to silence and intimidate former employees into accepting any terms unilaterally thrown at them,” the letter states.
Four days after Musk’s takeover, Twitter constructed a physical office in the Ghanaian capital of Accra and fired all but one of its African staff.
However, based on their employment contracts, the employees of approximately a dozen persons claim that they were not provided with severance pay, which is required under Ghana’s labour regulations.
In addition, they assert that, in contrast to employees in the US and EU, they were not informed of the company’s future plans.
The African employees wrote a letter to Twitter Ghana Ltd. rejecting a “Ghana Mutual Separation Agreement” that they claim Twitter sent to their personal emails, offering final pay that the company claims was reached after negotiation.
Several members of the team in a statement to CNN said there was no such negotiation on severance pay.
They claim it was below what is required by law and contradicts what Musk tweeted that departing employees would receive.
“Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required,” Musk tweeted.
Twitter informed the Ghana-based employees in early November that they would be paid until their last day of employment — December 4. And they will continue to receive full pay and benefits during the 30-day notice period.
“It was very vague, did not talk about outstanding leave or paid time off, and just asked us to sign if we agree. I never bothered to go back to the document because it is rubbish and is still in violation of labor laws here,” one former employee told CNN on condition of anonymity.
The Accra-based team charges Twitter with treating them unfairly, acting in secrecy, and treating them differently from other laid-off workers in other jurisdictions.
“The employees are distressed, humiliated, and intimidated by this turn of events. There are non-Ghanaian employees, some with young families, who moved here to take up jobs and have now been left unceremoniously in the lurch, with no provision for repatriation expenses and no way to communicate with Twitter, Inc. and discuss or plead their case,” the notice to Ghana’s Chief Labour Officer says.
Carla Olympio, an attorney for the laid-off workers, claims that the abrupt termination of nearly the entire team broke Ghanaian employment law since it was a “redundancy,” which calls for a three-month notice to the authorities and a discussion of redundancy pay.
“In stark contrast to internal company assurances given to Twitter employees worldwide prior to the takeover, it seems that little attempt was made to comply with Ghana’s labor laws, and the protections enshrined therein for workers in circumstances where companies are undertaking mass layoffs due to a restructuring or reorganization,”
The fired employees want three months’ worth of their gross pay as severance pay, the vesting of stock options granted to them under their contracts, repatriation costs for non-Ghanaian employees, and other perks like healthcare continuance that were provided to all employees globally.
