San Francisco – ‘Chief Twit’ Elon Musk on Monday refuted reports that he planned to lay off Twitter employees before 1 November, to stop them from receiving stock grants as part of their year-end compensation.
Responding to a tweet from Eric Umansky, deputy managing editor of “ProPublica”, that said Musk was “making sure to fire people at Twitter before part of their year-end compensation kicks in on Tuesday”, Musk said: “This is false.”
He didn’t give any further clarification.
The “New York Times” (NYT) first reported that Musk was planning to lay off employees before Tuesday.
According to the report, the new Twitter boss may not have to pay these grants if he lays off employees before November 1.
The Tesla CEO is expected to reorganise Twitter and cut the workforce by a massive margin.
Previous reports said Musk would lay off 75% (5 600 employees) of Twitter’s workforce.
Twitter has about 7 500 employees.
Musk completed his $44 billion (R798bn) acquisition of Twitter last week, and fired top executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and policy chief Vijaya Gadde.
He has casually mentioned laying off Twitter staff in his tweets, without mentioning any figure.
Twitter employees are anxious about expected staff cuts as part of the takeover.
They had written an open letter to the board of directors and Musk, criticising his plans to lay off 75% of the workforce.