Frustrated former Twitter staff had to wait 2 months after being laid off to get their severance agreements. Twitter blamed the delay on staff suing the company.

• Some Twitter staff who were laid off in November finally got their separation agreements on Saturday.
• Twitter said that it could have sent the paperwork "sooner" but was delayed by a court order.

Laid-off Twitter staff had to anxiously wait for two months to get their severance agreements from the company. When they did finally come through, Twitter blamed the delay on staff taking legal action related to their terminations.

The social-media giant laid off thousands of workers on November 4. Twitter finally followed through with their separation contracts on Saturday in emails from administrative services firm CPT Group.

In a follow-up email sent by Twitter's HR team, which Insider has viewed, the company said: "Please note that we would have sent you these agreements sooner, but a court order obtained by plaintiffs' attorneys resulted in this delay."

"Thank you for your patience," the email continued.

The email did not specify the details of the court order, which appears to have come down in one of the lawsuits that Twitter is facing in California federal court over Elon Musk's handling of layoffs since he took over the platform in October.

In a suit filed by a group of employees in varying stages of layoffs, a California federal court agreed that Twitter should alert employees receiving severance agreements about relevant ongoing lawsuits.

That suit was filed by plaintiffs including Emmanuel Cornet, who Twitter laid off in early November, and others who are officially being laid off this month and next.

The California federal court finalized the language of the notice on December 20, according to the court docket, which attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who is representing plaintiffs in the suit, told Insider was enough time for Twitter to have sent it sooner.

Some former Twitter workers told Insider's Kali Hays that they were disappointed by the severance the company ultimately offered them. The contracts offer one month of severance pay in return for former workers agreeing not to participate in lawsuits against Twitter or speak publicly about the company.

Musk had previously said that people who left the company would be given three months of severance.

Liss-Riordan told Insider that the court order gave enough time for Twitter to have sent out the agreements at least before the January 4, 2023, end date given to some laid off employees.

"It's disappointing, though unfortunately not unexpected, that Elon Musk would try to save money by ripping off his new employees and not paying them what they had been promised," she said. "We look forward to taking him on in court, in arbitration, wherever we need to, in order to win back what they are owed."

The purpose of the notice was so employees could "know about their options when deciding whether to accept the agreement," Liss-Riordan said.

The Cornet lawsuit has alleged that Musk's abrupt mass layoffs violated the notice requirements set by laws like the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which requires employees to get 60 days notice for layoffs.

The Twitter workers also said that before Musk's takeover, the company had reassured them that they'd be entitled to the same severance benefits as usual, even if Musk were to come in and conduct layoffs. Those benefits Twitter had offered before Musk's takeover included two months severance pay or more, along with other bonuses, according to the lawsuit.

The mortgage startup Better, which had laid off a large group of employees in 2021 over a large Zoom meeting, offered them more severance to account for the legally required notice period they didn't receive.