Twitter’s new Chief Executive Officer, Elon Musk, is set to sack about 3,700 officials of Twitter, amounting to half of the company’s global workforce.

In an email sent to members of staff, Twitter said it would be reducing its global workforce as from Friday.

Elon Musk who acquired Twitter and became its CEO in late October has been making noticeable changes in the administration of the platform.

In an email sent to almost half of Twitter on Thursday evening, it was made known that layoffs would begin immediately, and fired workers should not return to work on Friday.

The mail read, “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force.

“We recognise that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”

Employees who were selected to stay have been informed that the office will remain closed until November 7th, and have been urged to ‘refrain from discussing confidential company information.’ 

Additionally they will be told of Musk’s ‘vision for the company’ in the coming days, with ‘more information’ to be shared next week. 

The firings immediately prompted a class action lawsuit against Twitter for allegedly failing to give a 60-day warning of mass layoffs.

It had been widely reported that Musk planned to slash the company’s 7,500-person payroll after he finalized his $44 billion acquisition late last week.

Musk had earlier fired major executives in the company, including former CEO, Parag Agrawal; the Chief Financial Officer, Ned Segal; Chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde; and general counsel, Sean Edgett.

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