Two women who lost their jobs on Twitter after Elon Musk took over have sued the company, claiming recent layoffs have disproportionately affected female employees.
About half of the social media network workforce was lets go to the beginning of last month after Musk bought the company for $44 billion.
He later told the rest that they would have to work “high intensity”.
“Moving forward, to build a revolutionary Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” he said in a message.
“That will mean long hours of high intensity. Only outstanding performance will count as a passing grade.”
Attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan (front) says female employees have experienced more layoffs than male employees. photo: AP
The lawsuit argues that those requirements disproportionately affect women “who are more often caregivers of children and other family members, and therefore unable to meet those demands.”
The lawsuit, filed for former Carolina employees Bernal Strifling and Willow Wren Turkal, says 57 percent of female employees were fired as of Nov. 4, compared to 47 percent of male employees, citing a spreadsheet.
For women in engineering-related roles the gap would have been even greater, with 63% being fired, compared to 48% of men.
The lawsuit was filed by prominent labor rights lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan.
“Twitter’s mass employee layoffs impacted female employees far more than male employees and to a highly statistically significant extent,” Liss-Riordan wrote.
Willow Wren Turkal is one of the women suing Twitter. photo: AP
Speaking before a federal court in San Francisco, Liss-Riordan said he wanted to prove that “the richest man in the world is not above the law.”
He added: “We are arguing that the arbitration agreements (signed by Twitter staff) are not enforceable.
“But if we have to go through arbitration one by one, we’re ready to go through it.”
Twitter has not yet responded to a request for comment from Sky News.
Earlier this week, it was reported that bedrooms had been installed at Twitter’s San Francisco offices.
