A lawyer representing 100 ex-Twitter staff says the company's conduct has been 'incredibly egregious' since Elon Musk took over

• A lawyer filed demands for arbitration on behalf of 100 Twitter employees who lost their jobs.
• Since Elon Musk took over, Twitter's conduct has been "incredibly egregious," Shannon Liss-Riordan said.

A lawyer representing former Twitter staff says that the company's conduct has been "incredibly egregious" since new owner and CEO Elon Musk took over in late October.

Shannon Liss-Riordan on Tuesday filed 100 demands for arbitration on behalf of 100 former Twitter employees who lost their jobs and signed arbitration agreements after Musk bought the company, according to a press release from her firm, Lichten and Liss-Riordan.

"My firm has spoken with hundreds of Twitter employees who are seeking to preserve their rights and receive the compensation they are owed," Liss-Riordan said in a statement.

"The conduct of Twitter since Musk took over is incredibly egregious, and we will pursue every avenue to protect workers and extract from Twitter the compensation that is due to them."

She added that this was just the "first wave" of arbitration demands against the company. "More are coming," she said.

Liss-Riordan told Reuters that the workers had signed agreements saying they would bring legal disputes against the company in arbitration rather than in court, likely barring them from participating in the four pending class-action lawsuits she has already filed against Twitter.

The law firm said that Tuesday's filings incorporated claims that had already featured in the class-action suits, including accusing the company of breach of contract related to severance pay, of targeting female workers with layoffs, and of laying off staff on parental or medical leave in violation of federal law.

Some of the new filings also include claims that employees lost their jobs because Musk had placed "unreasonable demands" on the workforce.

After Musk's $44 billion takeover deal went through on October 27, he swiftly fired some of the company's top execs, including CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal.

The next week Musk started laying off staff, with around half of the company's 7,500-strong workforce being cut. Musk also began firing some workers who criticized him and his leadership of the company.

Remaining employees were then given an ultimatum. Staff were asked to respond to an email from Musk and commit to his vision for "Twitter 2.0," which he said would involve working "long hours at high intensity." Staff who didn't sign up by a certain cutoff time were laid off.

One of the pending class-action lawsuits filed by Liss-Riordan in California accused the company of pushing disabled employees to leave because they didn't feel they could meet the new performance standards.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.