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Rachel Bonn: 8-months pregnant woman with 9-month-old baby loses job during Twitter mass layoffs

Rachel Bonn, who is eight months pregnant, said that she lost access to her work on November 3 at night before the layoffs were announced

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA: An eight-month-pregnant Twitter employee claimed that access to her work laptop was disabled on the night of Thursday, November 3, just hours after Elon Musk warned layoffs would be communicated by email on Friday, November 4. Rachel Bonn posted a photo of herself holding her nine-month-old child on Twitter while giving news about the layoffs. 

According to Business Insider, the memo said that the employees who were being retained would be notified on their work email, while those who were being laid off would receive an email to their personal accounts at 9:00 a.m. PST. "Last Thursday in the SF office, really the last day Twitter was Twitter. 8 months pregnant and have a 9 month old. Just got cut off from laptop access #LoveWhereYouWorked," Bonn tweeted on November 3.  

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According to her LinkedIn page, Bonn was working at Twitter as a content marketing manager in San Francisco since July 2019. A Bloomberg report said that a class-action lawsuit was submitted on November 3 in a federal court in San Francisco, claiming that the proposed staff reductions were illegal under both California and federal law. According to reports, the complaint asked the court to order Twitter to abide with the WARN Act and forbid it from requesting that employees forgo their right to participate in the litigation.

The current spell of layoffs at the social media company was one of the worst it has witnessed in almost 16 years since its inception. About half the workforce was laid off amid retrenchment moves. There have been reports that nearly 3,800 employess had been fired. Entire departments such as content curation, partner relations, human rights and sales have been layed off, according to India Today.

Apart from Bonn, many former employees took to Twitter to share the news of their termination and share gratitude for getting to work for the company with the hastag #LoveWhereYouWork.

On November 5, Musk defended the reorganisation option by emphasising that "sadly there is no alternative." He said, "Twitter is losing $4million a day," according to the outlet. In response to widespread criticism of the way layoffs were implemented just a week after the acquisition, Musk tweeted, "Regarding Twitter's reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required." 

Musk acquired Twitter for $44B and immediately fired its CEO Parag Agarwal and policy Chief Vijaya Gadde amongst other leaders in the company. Rumors of massive layoffs have been doing the rounds for days and that anywhere from 25% to 75% of employess would lose their jobs.