Twitter sued for $500 million over unpaid severance, sues web scrapers

A new lawsuit, filed by former Twitter employee Courtney McMillian, claims the company owes its laid off workers $500 million in severance pay. The proposed class action lawsuit was filed on Wednesday against Twitter, which is now legally known as X Corp.According to McMillian, Twitter’s severance package was created in 2019 and offered employees two months of base pay in addition to one week of pay for every year they worked at the social media company. Senior employees were also owed a total of six month base pay, regardless of how much time they spent working at Twitter.Of course, then Elon Musk came along. In October 2022, Musk took over Twitter and the company had several rounds of layoffs in the months that followed. Some employees received one month of severance pay, others received nothing at all, according to McMillian’s filing.And McMillian would know what Twitter offered its employees better than most. Before she was laid off in January, McMillian was Twitter’s “head of total rewards” and oversaw the company’s employee benefits program. SEE ALSO: Twitter threatens lawsuit against Meta over Threads Now, this isn’t the first time that former Twitter employees sued the company over unpaid benefits or severance pay. But, McMillian is the first to claim that the issue goes beyond a breach of contract. McMillian’s suit accuses Musk of violating federal law, specifically the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, by not paying out severance as promised in the employee benefit package offered to employees.Twitter launches legal action…Twitter sued for $500 million over unpaid severance, sues web scrapers