San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said Tuesday that he will look into the loss of Twitter janitors jobs, which appears to be in violation of San Francisco law.
Members of the SEIU Local 87 went on strike Monday because their contract was due to expire on December 9. The contractor that employed them is set to be replaced by another contractor that Twitter wouldn't reveal to the union, according to Olga Miranda, president of the union local. She said that Twitter raised the janitors last day on the job to Monday.
When a company changes contractors for security or janitorial services, the contractor is supposed to hire at least 90 days after the transition. When contacted by MarketWatch on Tuesday, Chiu said Elon Musk has a long history of flouting labor laws. I am not surprised that this happened, but I feel for those workers as well as all of the Twitter employees and contractors who have been laid off. Miranda said that 48 janitors were affected, 30 of whom were waiting to go back to work because many Twitter employees had been working from home and not as many janitors were needed. San Francisco-based Twitter, whose communications team was almost completely laid off at the beginning of November after Musk bought the company, has not returned a request for comment. Musk has cut a quarter of the company's pre-acquisition workforce of 7,500 since he took over. Ted Goldberg, a senior editor at KQED, San Francisco's public radio station, said on Tuesday that the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection is launching an investigation into the news that Twitter has set up bedrooms for employees at its headquarters. A departmental spokeswoman told KQED News that the building is being used as intended.