San Francisco officials are investigating Twitter after six former employees allege that owner Elon Musk’s leadership team broke laws in turning the company’s headquarters into a “Twitter Hotel” for workers being pushed to stay up late to transform the social media platform.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that city officials are opening their latest investigation into the company that Musk took over late last year.
That’s after the ex-employees, including a former vice
president of real estate, alleged in a lawsuit filed in a federal court in
Delaware that Twitter didn’t pay them promised severance. Twitter is seeking
to dismiss the case.
They also allege that Musk’s team ordered
numerous changes to the company’s headquarters in a 1930s Art Deco building
in downtown San Francisco that violated building codes.
Those
changes included disabling lights and adding locks that wouldn’t open during
an emergency, according to the lawsuit.
One of the plaintiffs is
Tracy Hawkins, Twitter’s former vice president of real estate and workplace,
who was responsible for managing the company’s physical offices and
leases.
The lawsuit says Hawkins wasn’t initially opposed to Musk’s
takeover but “was forced to resign when Elon Musk and his transition team
insisted that she violate her professional ethics by causing Twitter to
intentionally breach its leases and other contracts.”
The lawsuit
claims Musk refused to pay rent on the building.
This is not the
first time San Francisco officials have tussled with Musk, who bought
Twitter for $44 billion in October and gutted much of its workforce as he
converted a part of the company’s headquarters into bedrooms.
Earlier
this year, San Francisco building inspectors gave Twitter’s construction
contractor two weeks to submit a corrected building use permit if the
company wanted to keep using two conference rooms as bedrooms.
The
city launched an investigation in December after Forbes reported on the
beds, prompting owner Musk to lash out at San Francisco Mayor London Breed,
even though there is no evidence she was involved in the
inspection.
