Union IT minister ‘condemns’ Twitter’s sacking of India staff

Ashwini Vaishnaw, union minister for information technology (IT), said on Sunday that sacked Twitter employees should have been given “a fair time for transition”, two days after the Elon Musk-owned social media platform seemingly fired all but 10 members of its 230-member staff in the country. According to a report by Business Standard, Vaishnaw said that the central government “condemns the way Twitter has sacked employees in India”.

On Friday, November 4, Mint reported that Twitter fired nearly its entire staff working for its India operations. Sources with knowledge of the matter said that as part of its firing, Twitter also sacked employees based in cities outside India, such as Singapore and London, who were working on projects based in India. According to the company’s financial filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) accessed by Mint through business research platform Tofler, Twitter Communications India reported employee benefit expenses worth ₹43.25 crore (around $5.3 million).

Now ex-employees of the company told Mint last Friday that at around 4AM on November 4, they received an intimation that said employees would be informed about their employment status later in the day. However, as of Friday, many were yet to receive official confirmations about the termination of their employment — and only found out after their internal official communication channels, as well as official resources such as laptops, stopped working.

The move was a part of new owner Elon Musk’s move to cut down losses. In a tweet, Musk said that globally, Twitter was facing operational losses worth $4 million per day — close to what Twitter was spending on its India employees per year as of March last year. Of its 7,500 employees globally, the company reportedly seeks to reduce its workforce by half.

Since its firing spree began on Friday, a report by The Wall Street Journal stated that Twitter has also called back some of its employees who were asked to leave. Details on the matter remain scarce as of now.