Twitter laid off most of its workers in Africa last year. They say they’ve been ignored and left without severance

Former Twitter employees in Ghana, who were laid off in November, have been left without severance pay and have not heard from the company for three months, sources told CNBC.

As part of new owner Elon Musk’s cost-cutting efforts, Twitter has laid off nearly all of the staff at its sole office in Africa.

Following news of the wave of job cuts around the world, Musk tweeted in November that “unfortunately there is no other choice when the company is losing over $4 million a day” .

“All those released were offered 3 months of severance pay, which is 50% more than legally required,” he added, although it was unclear from which office and from what jurisdiction he was referring to.

Under Ghanaian labor law, staff must be dismissed and should be three months’ notice before they are made redundant. Twitter employees in Accra, the capital, had less than a month, the sources said.

A former employee, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the situation, told CNBC on Monday that the workers had sought compensation in lieu of notice and damages for emotional distress as part of the negotiated settlement with Twitter, but both were rejected.

“Twitter has dealt with us in bad faith since we were fired in November 2022. There wasn’t even an attempt to negotiate a severance package with us until international news started reporting it, and after we approached the labor office in Ghana,” said another source, who also spoke to CNBC on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the situation.

“It was a tedious process and they rejected some of our requests, which we thought was fair given the circumstances and the way we were treated.”

Through their legal representative, the employees finally reached out to accept what they saw as a watered-down severance offer in May, but have endured Twitter radio silence ever since.

“We played ball and accepted the offer they made just so we could move on with our lives. However, they have completely ignored us since our lawyer contacted theirs to accept the offer in May. For many of us, the expenses due have also not been paid,” the second source added.

Twitter responded to CNBC’s request for comment with an automated reply.

The first source also told CNBC that “everyone is tired and frustrated.”

“This settlement is not even what was promised, but we decided to accept it and it was a struggle,” they said.

“Some still haven’t found jobs, have families to support and this severance will go a long way, so to have it delayed in this (way) is so sad.”

Since Musk acquired the social media platform for $44 billion in October, Twitter has lost nearly half of its ad revenue and continues to generate negative cash flow, Musk said over the weekend, while taking on substantial debt.

The company also faces competition from the new Meta Threads platform, which registered more than 100 million users in its first week of operation.

Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern Business School, written on friday that Twitter last week “became MySpace: an innovation-empty social network slowly euthanized by Meta”.

“The decline in revenue is correlated with its downsizing, but not caused by it,” Galloway added.