X. Corp has agreed to try to settle lawsuits brought by thousands of former Twitter employees who claim they were cheated of severance pay, according to a memo written by a lawyer for the staffers seen by Bloomberg News.
“After 10 months of pressing them in every direction we have succeeded in getting Twitter to the table,” attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan wrote in the memo to her clients, which Bloomberg said it obtained from a former Twitter employee who asked not to be identified because they were disclosing confidential information.
“Twitter wants to mediate with us in a global attempt to settle all claims we have filed,” the memo said.
Bloomberg reported that almost 2,000 former Twitter employees agreed to company demands to enter arbitration, but said Liss-Riordan has complained in court filings that Twitter hasn’t shown up to talk.
The memo said that private negotiations with a mediator are now set for Dec. 1 and 2.
Former employees have filed multiple lawsuits over the wholesale firings that happened when Musk arrived on the scene, including one in July seeking $500 million, claiming that despite public promises they would be paid when he took over the company in October, they’ve gotten nothing.
The suit claims Musk and Twitter “breached their fiduciary duties” by misleading employees about severance pay eligibility and then failing to make the associated payments, with Musk and Co. instead using those funds to help the company after terminating thousands of employees.
“We are very proud to be representing nearly 2,000 former Twitter employees, in individual arbitrations as well as more than a dozen class action lawsuits in court,” Liss-Riordan said in a statement to Bloomberg. “We are working hard to recover what they are owed.”
In response to an emailed request for comment Thursday morning, X sent an reply that said, “Busy now, please check back later.”