Elon Musk and his parent company of social media platform Twitter, X Corp, are facing an investigation over building code violations at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on Market Street. This information was recently revealed through online public records with the county’s Department of Building Inspection. The investigation follows a lawsuit filed by six former Twitter employees in Delaware court, alleging that Musk’s “transition team” knowingly and repeatedly ordered them to break local and federal laws, including making unsafe modifications to the company’s office space.
The lawsuit alleges that under Musk’s management, X Corp directed employees to turn rooms in the San Francisco headquarters office into “hotel rooms,” while lying to inspectors and their landlord that they were just “temporary rest spaces” with some comfortable furniture added and no substantive or structural changes. One employee was instructed to place locks on the unauthorized “hotel room” doors that did not meet a California code which “requires locks that automatically disengage when the building’s fire suppression systems are triggered.”
The complaint notes that Musk’s transition team repeatedly told employees “compliant locks were too expensive” and instructed them to “immediately install cheaper locks that were not compliant with life safety and egress codes.” An employee quit rather than breaking the law, according to the lawsuit.
Additional Allegations
The lawsuit also alleges that Musk-led Twitter failed to pay the employees severance, back pay, and benefits they were owed, and discriminated against some senior employees on the basis of age, gender, and sexual orientation when it decided to terminate them. The complaint further alleges that Musk and his transition team ordered employees involved in real estate management to slash costs by $500 million as quickly as possible. In the drive to cut costs, the Musk transition team told employees to refuse to pay landlords who were owed rent by the company.
When informed of the risks of termination fees for certain leases, Steve Davis, Boring Company executive and member of Musk’s transition team, told Twitter senior employees, “Well, we just won’t pay those. We just won’t pay landlords,” adding, “we just won’t pay rent,” according to the complaint.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has been actively courting Musk to move Twitter headquarters to his jurisdiction. On Friday, he wrote on Twitter, “let’s get them to MIA asap.” CNBC reached out to Twitter for further information, and the company responded with an automated response that included a poop emoji but no comment.
A representative for the Department of Building Inspection in San Francisco said in an emailed statement that the complaint was opened Friday morning and “no further action has been taken yet.” “We expect to reach out to building management soon,” the spokesperson wrote. “We are not speculating on future potential enforcement action.”
In conclusion, Elon Musk and X Corp are facing an investigation over building code violations at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. The company is also facing a lawsuit filed by six former employees who allege that Musk’s “transition team” knowingly and repeatedly ordered them to break local and federal laws, including making unsafe modifications to the company’s office space. The lawsuit further alleges that Musk-led Twitter failed to pay the employees severance, back pay, and benefits they were owed, and discriminated against some senior employees on the basis of age, gender, and sexual orientation.
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