MADRID – After his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk wants to halve the global workforce. On Friday, Twitter Spain fired 26 employees by email.
The unions UGT and CCOO assured on Sunday that these layoffs are null and void. They offered the dismissed workers help with advice concerning the denunciation of these ‘null’ resignations.
Dismissal is null and void
The general secretary of the UGT, Pepe Álvarez, has warned that Twitter Spain must take back all 26 people. This is because “it must be done as a collective resignation”, in addition to opening a consultation period and the possibility to negotiate for 15 days. Finally, the labour authority must be informed. “If you don’t do it this way, the layoffs will be null and void,” emphasises the union spokesperson via a message on his Twitter account.
Need for prior approval from government administration
These layoffs, Alvarez said, demonstrate the need for prior approval from the government administration in case of collective layoffs, because “people can’t be so unprotected”. “The issue was pending in the last reform. Furthermore, it is clear we need to pick it up again,” the union representative admitted on the networks.
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Therefore, he announced that he would denounce these dismissals to the Labour Inspectorate. He also makes experts available to take legal action. “A social rule of law cannot allow a man, no matter how rich he is, to trample on rights while leaving people out of work. The UGT is going to fight it,” assured Pepe Álvarez.
Union CCOO
The CCOO is also making itself available to Twitter employees to advise on this situation. “It seems that yesterday at 5.30 pm almost all employees of Twitter Spain received an email with their resignation,” the general secretary of the organisation, Unai Sordo, published on Saturday on his account on this social network now run by the eccentric billionaire Elon Musk.
This measure fits in with the announcement that Musk made when he took ownership of the social network. In particular, according to several US media outlets, the richest man in the world announced that he intended to “makeup 50% of the global workforce, consisting of 7,500 men and by word of mouth from Friday.
