Twitter engineer claims he was sacked for helping other employees who lost jobs

A former employee of Twitter has accused the social media giant for sacking him after he developed a tool that allows workers to save important documents in anticipation of mass layoffs, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

The engineer, Emmanuel Cornet, filed a complaint with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board on Monday said that he was engaged in protected activity when he shared the software on an internal Twitter messaging channel, the report added.

"Protected activities" are actions that workers can take without fear of employer retaliation under U.S. labor law.

As per the report, Cornet said he developed a Google Chrome extension to allow employees to download emails from their Twitter accounts. That would ensure workers could save important documents such as statements reflecting their stock in Twitter, performance reviews, and other human resource documents.

Cornet said in the complaint that he was fired on Nov. 1, a few days before Twitter’s massive layoffs began and the same day that he published and shared his extension.

Cornet and four other Twitter employees had filed a lawsuit in California federal court on Friday accusing the social media company of violating federal and California laws requiring employers to give 60 days' notice before engaging in mass layoffs.

Meanwhile, the world’s richest man on Friday took to Twitter to assure that a fair severance has been paid to all those have been laid off without notice.