The giant social media companies are again in the media. The social damage that is often the focus of media reports for them is instead another type of social damage; it is focussed on reports of large scale layoffs.
Much ado has been made about Elon Musk’s, the world's richest person, $US44 billion acquisition of Twitter.
Since taking over, Twitter has started a major round of layoffs. It is reported that employees were alerted of their job status by email after the company barred access to the entrances of offices and cut off workers' access to internal systems overnight.
The move followed a period of uncertainty about the company's future. Elon Musk had tweeted that the service was experiencing a "massive drop in revenue" over doubt whether Twitter would protect content moderation on its platform.
Twitter has been silent about the depth of the cuts but it has been reported Twitter is looking to cut around 3,700 staff - about half the workforce. Staff who worked in engineering, communications, product, content curation and machine learning ethics were among those impacted by the layoffs, according to tweets from Twitter staff.
It is reported that a class action has been filed against Twitter by its employees, who argue that the company was conducting mass layoffs without providing the required 60 day advance notice, in violation of federal and California law.
Meta Platforms (Facebook) says it will also cut more than 11,000 jobs, or 13 percent of its workforce. Meta hired more staff during the pandemic to meet an upturn in social media usage by stuck-at-home consumers. But its business is reported to have suffered this year as advertisers and consumers cut spending in the face of cost of living pressures and high interest rates.
It is always difficult to hear that your job may be lost. If you understand the reason for it and if the process undertaken by the employer to come to that decision is fair then the loss of your job may be easier to bear. Afterall, redundancies are often referred to as “no fault” terminations of employment.
In New Zealand an employer can make an employee redundant if the employer has a good commercial reason to do so. But the employer must comply with the statutory duty of good faith. It needs to provide the employee with all relevant information and it must follow a fair process.
That fair process will involve consulting with affected employees. If the employees are union members, then the union must be involved in the consultation process. Where there is a need to make a number of staff redundant then the employer must establish a fair selection process. If there are opportunities for the affected employees to be redeployed into other areas of the business (usually known vacancies) then those opportunities must be explored with affected employees as well. Read more.....