Twitter has failed to pay millions in worker bonuses, lawsuit claims

Twitter is facing a lawsuit claiming it failed to pay workers millions of dollars in promised bonuses, adding to a pile of court cases filed since Elon Musk acquired the social media company.

Mark Schobinger, who was Twitter's senior director of compensation and left the company last month, filed the proposed class action in San Francisco federal court on Tuesday (Jun 21).

Schobinger says that before and after Musk purchased Twitter last year, the company promised employees that they would receive 50 per cent of their target bonuses for 2022. But those payments never materialized, according to the lawsuit, which accuses Twitter of breach of contract.

Twitter, also known as X Corp, no longer has a media relations office. It responded to a request for comment on the lawsuit with a poop emoji. Schobinger's lawyer, Shannon Liss-Riordan, represents ex-Twitter workers in several other lawsuits and about 2,000 individual arbitration cases stemming from mass layoffs ordered by Musk last year.

Twitter in those cases is accused of failing to pay promised severance and targeting female employees and workers with disabilities for layoffs, among other claims. The company has denied wrongdoing.

Many landlords, vendors and consultants have also sued Twitter over unpaid bills, some of which Musk inherited when he bought the company.

Twitter is also being sued in Delaware by three former executives including ex-CEO Parag Agrawal who say it reneged on obligations to reimburse more than US$1 million in legal fees they incurred responding to requests from government regulators.