Translation, via Deepl (https://www.deepl.com/translator):

Twitter employees fight back

Berlin, 18.11.2022 - Is Elon Musk, the Tesla and recently also Twitter CEO, shooting the bird? Since Musk took over the social network with the little bird in the logo on October 28, it has been in a downward spiral. No sooner had the takeover agreement been signed than Musk fired the entire management team in the U.S., the parent country of the group, from one moment to the next. Just one week later, on November 4, nearly 50 percent of Twitter's 7,500 employees worldwide received their notice by e-mail. A total of 3,738 employees had all access to the company, including their mail accounts, blocked on the same day. Among the approximately 30 employees of Twitter Germany GmbH in Germany, the terminations were announced by mail on 11/4/22.

Most affected is the area of software development. "There is hardly anyone left," says Tom*, who worked in the software area at Twitter until November 4. Worldwide, he says, very, very few of the developers* remain. Tom knows this because they have all always worked in international teams. Since the layoffs, the teams have been exchanging information via Signal or WhatsApp groups. Tom is also in contact with one of the employees who filed a class action lawsuit in the US against the layoffs there. Elon Musk should have given at least 60 days' written notice of the layoffs. In America, too, employees have rights that Musk apparently thinks he can ignore.

Image caption: When Twitter still had an office in Germany and didn't yet rent into co-working spaces: a gadget with the short message service's logo on a meeting table with an engraved hashtag sign at Twitter's former Hamburg location.

Charisius/dpa

"We need to organize"

Tom and his colleagues* in Germany, almost all of whom work or worked for Twitter exclusively remotely from home, received their written notices in the mail on November 16, according to the electronic ones. By that time, Tom had already joined ver.di. "I was annoyed that I hadn't done it already." It was the way they were terminated, along the lines of, I'm not talking to anyone beforehand, I'm just firing, that hit Tom personally and pissed him off. His grandfather came to mind, a union historian who has written several books on the origins and workings of unions. Among them, about how printers once banded together. It was clear to Tom that "we have to organize.

Thought, done. He was also able to convince the other laid-off workers in Germany to join ver.di. They are now taking legal action against their dismissal with ver.di on their side. And they also want to set up a works council. Even if they don't end up staying with the company, at least their colleagues who will stay should be better protected against further quick fixes by Elon Musk in the future.

Twitter currently has around 7.8 million users in Germany, and 229 million people worldwide use the network every day. Almost since the first tweet was circulated in 2006, Twitter has been an important platform for following world events almost simultaneously, be it the Arab Spring or currently the war in Ukraine or the Iranian uprising for freedom and self-determination. Tom says until Musk took over, he would have loved working for Twitter, even though the amount of work and working across different time zones often made it difficult to switch off and have a personal life. "It was my favorite job," Tom says. That's another reason why he and his colleagues want to show Musk that he's not going to get rid of them that easily.
Cool job, cool union

Hikmat El-Hammouri, who also installed the first works council at TikTok for ver.di with the employees there and will now accompany the Twitter employees on this path, is certain: "This will set a precedent." All the employees in the social media companies and so-called start-ups who always believed they didn't need something like co-determination, store stewards or works councils, that it didn't fit into the new cool digital working world, are now seeing that trade unions and union achievements can also be cool, because bosses like Elon Musk can't just do whatever they want with them.

Text: Petra Welzel

*Tom is not the real name of the Twitter employee, he wishes to remain anonymous