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Former cleaning staff at Twitter told the BBC that staff are now "afraid"

By James Clayton & Ben Derico

BBC News, San Francisco

Cleaners at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco have told the BBC they were sacked without severance pay.

One of them told the BBC a member of Elon Musk's team had said their jobs would be replaced by robots.

A California state senator said Mr Musk was treating the former staff "like garbage".

San Francisco's city attorney, David Chiu, said he's investigating if Mr Musk broke the law. Twitter has not responded to a BBC request for comment.

"Elon Musk has had a long history of flouting labour laws," Mr Chiu told the BBC.

"While I'm not surprised this happened, I feel for these workers. We will be looking into this further."

Image caption,

Juana Laura Chavero Ramirez says she might not be able to afford her diabetic medication

The BBC spoke to four cleaners who say they were fired from Twitter on Monday - their interviews were conducted in Spanish.