Musk's X reaches tentative $500 mn settlement with ex-Twitter workers

Elon Musk's X has reached a tentative settlement with former employees of the company then known as Twitter who'd sued for $500 million in severance pay.

The parties disclosed the deal in a Wednesday court filing asking for a scheduled Sept 17 hearing in the case to be postponed. The San Francisco federal appeals court on Thursday agreed to postpone the hearing so that both sides could finalise the settlement agreement.

The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The proposed class action lawsuit by former Twitter employees Courtney McMillan and Ronald Cooper, who said the company failed to pay them and other fired workers severance they were owed.

Musk took over the social media platform in 2022 and let thousands of employees go, eliminating entire teams dedicated to trust and safety, human rights and making the site accessible to people with disabilities.

Other lawsuits, including one filed by Twitter executives including former CEO Parag Agrawal, are still pending.

The billionaire's approach to gutting Twitter's workforce served as a template for his months-long leadership of President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as it cut tens of thousands of federal workers earlier this year.

An email announcing a deferred resignation offer to federal workers, promising pay through September without having to work, was titled Fork in the Road, echoing a similar email Musk sent to the Twitter workforce in 2022.

Musk's drawn-out legal battles with more than 2,000 former Twitter workers were also a precursor to the court battles the Trump administration is now fighting over federal downsizing, though the circumstances are different.