Elon Musk got rid of Twitter's remote-work policy. It's an attempt to 'manufacture' a reason to fire employees, claims the lawyer who's suing the company.

• Elon Musk is requiring workers to be in the office at least 40 hours a week starting November 10.
• Employees were promised at least one year of remote work benefits, a lawsuit against Twitter says.

On Wednesday, Elon Musk told Twitter employees that they're required to start working from the office. The decision is an attempt by Musk to find another way to downsize the company's workforce, says the lawyer who's suing Twitter.

"It's clear that Musk's elimination of remote work, with virtually no notice, is an effort to manufacture a reason to terminate employees while skirting obligations under the WARN Act and severance obligations," a spokesperson said on behalf of Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney filing the lawsuit.

"Our litigation seeks to hold him accountable," the spokesperson added in a statement to Insider.

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Musk laid off around 3,700 Twitter employees in his first weeks at the helm of the company.

On November 3, several Twitter employees filed a lawsuit against the company for terminating workers without notice. The WARN Act, or the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, requires companies with 100 or more employees to give a 60-day notice in the event of mass layoffs.

In an email to Twitter employees this week, Musk announced that all workers were required to return to the office for 40 hours a week, effective the very next day.

"The road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed," Musk wrote in the email. "We are also changing Twitter policy such that remote work is no longer allowed, unless you have a specific exception. Managers will send the exceptions lists to me for review an approval."

The updated lawsuit, filed on November 8, says employees had been promised they could continue working remotely for at least a year after Musk bought Twitter.

Five former and current employees — Emmanuel Cornet, Justine De Caires, Grae Kindel, Alexis Camacho, and Jessica Pan — are named in the lawsuit. Camacho lives in Honolulu, Hawaii, but is required to report to Twitter's headquarters in California for work immediately, according to the lawsuit.

"Employees such as Camacho are now subject to harm based upon Musk's sudden abolition of that remote work policy and also have been harmed due to having passed up the opportunity to search for other jobs when the job market was more favorable," the lawsuit claims.

Musk did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.