S.F. opening Twitter investigation after ex-workers sue Elon Musk
San Francisco officials are opening a new investigation aimed at Twitter’s Mid-Market headquarters after an explosive lawsuit from former senior employees alleged numerous instances where members of owner Elon Musk’s team knowingly broke local and federal laws.
The six former employees say Twitter didn’t pay promised severance and that Musk’s team instructed staff to disable lights and install locks that wouldn’t open during an emergency at employee bedrooms at 1355 Market St., violating building codes.
“Twitter’s new leadership deliberately, specifically, and repeatedly announced their intentions to breach contracts, violate laws, and otherwise ignore their legal obligations,” the six former employees alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Delaware federal court.
The suit names Twitter’s successor company X Corp. and Musk as defendants. Twitter, which laid off its communications team, auto-replied to an emailed request for comment with a poop emoji.
“We will be opening a new complaint and conducting an investigation into these new allegations,” Patrick Hannan, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Building Inspection, told The Chronicle.
Plaintiff Joseph Killian, the former Twitter lead project manager of global design and construction, described Musk’s team allegedly telling him to violate building codes as part of creating rooms for tired employees to sleep in.
In addition to installing beds, Killian said he was told to disconnect motion-sensitive lights because they were bothering people trying to sleep, despite Twitter’s landlord rejecting that request. He said he hired an electrician to do so, allegedly violating both the building code and Twitter’s lease.
Killian also said he was told to install space heaters, violating the lease, and install door locks that “were not compliant with life safety and egress codes” because they wouldn’t automatically unlock in case of fire or earthquake.
Killian said that doing so would block “first responders from being able to access the rooms” in case of emergency, but that Musk’s team wanted cheaper locks that wouldn’t automatically unlock.
“Nobody cared,” the lawsuit stated. “Killian quit that day.” The lawsuit alleges that non-compliant locks were later installed by someone else.
Killian said that he was told not to detail these planned changes when city inspectors visited the building in December.
“When the city inspectors came to inspect the hotel rooms, they expressed surprise and relief to Killian, saying, ‘This is just furniture! We expected more drastic changes,’ ” according to the lawsuit.
The city previously ruled Twitter needed to update a building permit to come into compliance and allow for areas for workers to sleep in. But six months after the bedroom investigation started, the permit has not been approved.
The other five plaintiffs include Wolfram Arnold, a former staff software engineer; Erik Froese, former software engineering senior manager; Tracy Hawkins, who led Twitter’s real estate division; Laura Chan Pytlarz, former global strategy lead of food and events; and Andrew Schlaikjer, former senior staff machine learning engineer. They couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Hawkins said she quit after Twitter stopped paying vendors or its office landlords, an alleged move that has also sparked numerous lawsuits, including from Shorenstein, Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters landlord. Twitter had over $130 million in annual office rent obligations, according to the lawsuit.
“Elon told me he would only pay rent over his dead body,” Musk adviser Pablo Mendoza allegedly told Hawkins, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro “loudly opined that it was unreasonable for Twitter’s landlords to expect Twitter to pay rent, since San Francisco was a s—hole.”
Arnold, Froese, Pytlarz and Schlaikjer allege that they were fired and not paid “contractually required severance.”
The plaintiffs are seeking severance, punitive damages for “flagrant bad faith,” alleged fraud and alleged violation of local and federal laws.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
