By Andrea Hargraves 
Cleaners at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, California, claim they were fired without compensation and say they are discriminated against because they are union members.
Elon Musk was not yet an official owner of Twitter, and his intentions to restructure it were already known, both in terms of the social network’s performance and internally. Nearly half of the company’s 7,500 employees worldwide will be laid off a week after the purchase, and although the millionaire has reversed a portion of the layoffs, the way he has continued to handle the workforce still speaks volumes. The worst reasons.
Now, four employees of the team responsible for cleaning the company’s headquarters, in San Francisco, California, claim that they were fired after a protest procedure and without the right to compensation. While working last week, the workers were informed that their jobs were in danger, so they decided to organize a strike on Monday as a form of demonstration. On the same day, they were dismissed with immediate effect and without the right to compensation, the head of the cleaners’ union, Olga Miranda, denounced to the BBC, who attributed the dismissal to the fact that the workers involved were part of the collective. .
Three weeks before Christmas, Adriana Villarreal, who has worked for Blue Bird for four years and is part of the outback group, doesn’t know what to do without enough money to feed her family. “It’s sad and depressing for our families and children. We should have Christmas presents and a plate of food on the table during Christmas Eve, but we have nothing,” he said.
Joanna Laura Chavero Ramirez, who has been on Twitter for five years, shares the same concerns. She has diabetes and worries that she won’t have enough money to buy the medicine she needs. “It’s terrible. We’re not only losing our job, we’re losing our livelihood,” he said, not knowing what to do from now on, since at the moment there are few vacancies for a cleaning attendant. in San Francisco.
Accompanied by security while cleaning
Julio Alvarado has been cleaning Twitter headquarters for ten years. The work environment has always been good, but then Musk came along, in October, and people who “work without worry” started doing it “with fear”. He came escorted by private security guards while cleaning parts of Musk’s office, and more recently, the billionaire’s team warned him that his work would end up obsolete soon, as robots would take over the jobs of the cleaning staff. Unemployed and supporting his family in Mexico, Alvarado worries about paying the bills: “I don’t have the money to pay the rent. I’m not going to get medical insurance. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Ongoing investigation
California Senator Scott Weiner considered that Musk treated workers “like trash” and that the San Francisco city attorney is investigating whether the Tesla boss also broke the law. David Chew told the BBC: “Elon Musk has a long history of violating labor laws. And I’m not surprised that happened, I feel so sorry for these workers. We’ll look into this further.”
The BBC urged a response to the accusations, and Twitter remained silent.