Twitter’s Human Resources officials Friday informed the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment and Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett that the company will be laying off 87 employees at its Boulder office.

The announcement comes as part of a mass layoff at Twitter which began Friday as new owner Elon Musk makes changes that have raised concerns about the social media platform’s ability to fight misinformation prior to Tuesday’s midterm elections, according to an article from the AP. About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, according to published reports including the AP.

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Terminations in the Boulder office will begin Jan. 4, according to the letter. None of the affected employees are represented by a union. The layoffs are expected to be permanent.

Fired employees will be paid their wages and benefits through the date of termination, according to the letter. Employees were notified by email on Nov. 4., the same day the news broke on most major news websites regarding the layoffs.

Several employees tweeted about loosing their jobs or whole teams being let go – including those working in human rights and global conflicts, one that checks algorithms for bias in how tweets get amplified, and an engineering team that helps make the platform more accessible for people with disabilities, according to AP.

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The firings follow the removal of the entire board of directors and CEO Parag Agrawal. Managers were not notified about who would be laid off prior to the announcement, according to a source from the AP.

A lawsuit has been filed in San Francisco regarding one employee layoff and two employees who were locked out of their work systems. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) statute requires private and public companies with 100 or more employees to report the layoffs. 

The pending layoff has not appeared on the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s WARN listings webpage as of Monday afternoon.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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