Sacked Twitter staff in Ghana finally get pay-off

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - ACCRA — X, formerly known as Twitter, has finally paid off the staff it sacked in its African headquarters more than a year after they were laid off, the agency which represents them has said.

Most had only been in the job, based in Ghana's capital, Accra, for a few months when the social media platform fired them in November 2022.

They had threatened to take X to court for failing to pay the redundancy money they said they were promised.

The company has not commented. X has previously said that it had paid ex-employees in full.

Elon Musk, who took over the company in 2022, embarked on a massive global cull of employees, sacking more than 6,000 people.

He had said he was losing more than $4m (£3.5m) a day.

The African contingent, who number fewer than 20, had only just moved into X's new office in Accra, following about eight months of working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Agency Seven Seven, the company providing legal representation to the staff, said it had been successful in its quest to get a redundancy settlement and repatriation expenses for foreign staff, although it did not specify the amount of the pay-out.

"They are very pleased to finally be able to get their due, put this behind them and look to the future," Carla Olympio from Agency Seven Seven told the BBC.

Last year, sacked staffers told the BBC their treatment by X had harmed their mental health and their finances.

"It's difficult when it's the world's richest man owing you money and closure," one said.

They said they were initially told that, although their contracts were being terminated, they would be paid to work for one more month. But they were immediately locked out of their emails and no further salary payments were made.

Since then, the staff said they had been involved in a frustrating battle for compensation.

Some of them had moved from neighboring countries, such as Nigeria. Their contract termination meant they were left stranded in Ghana, along with their families.

In a rare interview last April, Musk told the BBC that the social media giant had 1,500 employees, down from the just under 8,000 who were employed at the time he bought the company.

When the news of Musk's radical staff cull became public, he tweeted that laid-off employees were given three months' severance pay.

But the staff based in the Africa office say they did not receive this.

According to Agency Seven Seven, X only began negotiations with the sacked Africa staff after the BBC covered the story.

Last year, X was hit by a lawsuit, filed by ex-employees in a California court, for allegedly refusing to pay at least $500m in promised severance packages. — BBC