X, previously identified as Twitter, has finally compensated employees who were dismissed from its African headquarters more than a year ago. The agency that serves as their representative revealed this information. These employees had been jobless for over a year following layoffs at the company’s African base.
The majority of these individuals had been employed in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, for just a few months when they were dismissed from the social media company in November 2022.
X was recently compelled to settle the dues of its former employees that the firm had dismissed at its African headquarters over a year ago. Such a step was taken following the threat of a lawsuit for not compensating the fired employees with their promised redundancy money.
Elon Musk, who took control of X in 2022, had laid off over 6,000 employees across the globe as part of a massive restructuring. The motive, he said, was to curtail losses amounting to over $4m a day. Particularly in Africa, less than 20 employees who had just relocated to X’s new workspace in Accra were handed pink slips. They had spent close to eight months working remotely due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Agency Seven Seven, representing the terminated workers, confirmed achieving a redundancy settlement and repatriation expenses for its overseas employees, despite not disclosing the exact sum. “Finally, they’re able to get their due, turn the page and look ahead to the future,” quipped Carla Olympio from Agency Seven Seven.
In their communication with the BBC last year, the laid-off employees had blamed X for causing mental and financial distress.
The dismissed employees reported that after being informed of their contracts’ cessation, they were promised payment for another month. However, they found themselves immediately locked out of their work emails, and no further compensation was issued.
In his interview last April, Mr. Musk revealed that X had only 1,500 employees remaining, a significant decrease from the approximately 8,000 employees at the time of his takeover. When news of the massive layoffs broke, Musk tweeted that the laid-off employees were given three months’ severance pay, a claim refuted by the African-based workforce.
According to Agency Seven Seven, X only began discussing severance packages with the dismissed African staff following BBC’s coverage of the incident. Last year, X had faced a lawsuit filed by its former employees in California, alleging the refusal to disburse at least $500m in promised severance packages.
