Shannon Liss-Riordan, a United States-based labour lawyer, is suing
Twitter over Elon Musk’s plan to layoff thousands of employees. The world’s
richest man, Elon Musk, acquired Twitter for $44 million last month. Since
then, he has fired the heads of various departments, including CEO Parag
Agrawal.

Thousands of Twitter employees were suddenly locked out of their work
accounts and barred from going into office on Friday.

The class action suit was filed Thursday at a San Francisco federal
court. It alleges that employees were not given enough notice of mass layoffs
which is in violation of California and federal law.

The suit filed by Shannon Liss-Riordan seeks an order requiring Twitter
to obey the WARN Act – the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification. The
WARN Act, a federal law, requires employers to give 60 days’ notice in case of
mass layoffs or other work disruptions.

The class action suit also seeks that the court restrict Twitter from
making staffers sign documents that will take away their right to engage in
litigation.

“We filed this lawsuit tonight (Thursday) in an attempt to make sure
that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and they
have an avenue for pursuing their rights,” Liss-Riordan told Bloomberg.

Who is Shannon Liss-Riordan?

Shannon Liss-Riordan is a labour lawyer best known for her pursuit of
class action cases against global corporate giants such as Uber, FedEx and
Starbucks. She was born in 1969 and grew up in Houston, Texas.

Liss-Riordan graduated from Harvard with a bachelors degree and
subsequently went to work for Bella Abzug, a leader of the 1990s American
feminist movement. She then went on to study law at Harvard. She graduated
Harvard Law in 1996.

Her first experience with labour law came when she joined Pyle Rome
Lichten & Ehrenberg, a Boston-based labour law firm.

She tasted success when she won two disability discrimination trials in
federal court.

Shannon Liss-Riordan filed a number of lawsuits against tech giants engaged
in the gig economy. These include Lyft, Uber and Amazon. These suits raised the
question if companies improperly classified their workers as independent
contractors. In 2015, Shannon Liss-Riordan was called “one of the most
influential and controversial figures in Silicon Valley.”

Liss-Riordan ran for the United States Senate for Massachusetts as a
Democrat in 2020. She also ran for the seat of Massachusetts Attorney general
in 2021.