Twitter, under the leadership of Elon Musk, laid off all but one of its African employees barely four days after launching a physical office in Accra, the capital of Ghana, after Musk’s takeover.
Ghanaian Twitter employees were forewarned to brace themselves for a probable wave of layoffs, with warning signals looming.
Emails of termination were sent to the personal accounts of the Ghana employees, who were denied access to their work.
After being fired, former employees at Twitter’s Africa headquarters accuse the company of “deliberately and recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana” and attempting to “silence and intimidate” them.
The team has engaged an attorney and issued a letter to the firm requesting that it comply with the West African nation’s labour laws and give them additional severance pay and other relevant perks, as other Twitter employees would get.
A letter to the country’s Chief Labour Officer indicates they have also petitioned the Ghanaian government to force Twitter to “adhere to the laws of Ghana on redundancy and grant the employees a fair and equitable negotiation and redundancy compensation.”
The Ghana-based team accuses Twitter of dealing with them in bad faith, not being transparent, and discriminating against them compared to other countries laid-off employees.
Their attorney, Carla Olympio, asserts that the abrupt dismissal of almost the entire team breached Ghanaian employment law because it constituted “redundancy,” which requires a three-month notice to authorities and negotiation of redundancy compensation.
Twitter has suggested that it would “come to the table” and resume negotiations after the rejection of a severance offer by Ghanaian workers.