Fire your Australian employees.
This isnt about “Jobs for the sake of Jobs” this is about a secure product.
But you already knew that.
This isnt about “Jobs for the sake of Jobs” this is about a secure product.
But you already knew that.
Except that doesn't work for this.
Even if you're overseas, I doubt that authorities will come between you and your lawful government. And OK, maybe they would, if it were North Korea, or even China. But Australia? That seems unlikely. Especially with the 5/13/whatever Eyes aspect.
If I was fired because of a legislation change I'd sue my employer for unfair dismissal. But of course, that assumes your (Australian) subsidiary continues running. I would expect that you'd want to shut that down too, since it could be given a TCN as well -- and the fines for noncompliance are in the millions.
It would be because you showed up to work late, or your performance suffered. There is plenty of discretion for normal practices to become scrutinized when convenient in an employer-employee relationship.
This always leaves the former employee to spend time and resources trying to make some impossible correlation that could only be proven if the employer said the most amateurish thing possible.
As someone who has had family members go through the unfair dismissal process (where an employer tried to pull exactly this tactic), employers cannot just lie about the reasons for a dismissal. Doing so can actually result in larger compensation, as a punitive measure. There needs to be sufficient evidence for the lay-off, as well as evidence that it was a long-term issue. Courts often favour employees in such cases (in one case a friend was unfairly dismissed from CSIRO, a government body, and they received the maximum possible compensation as well as assistance from CSIRO to help him update his resume for his next job).
But this is besides the point. The topic in question is whether employers should lay off their employees in protest of the new law -- it would hardly be an effective protest if you didn't state why you were laying this people off. It'd also be ridiculously suspicious if the entire Australian office was fired because they "consistently showed up to work late".
Don't get me wrong, I really hope companies retaliate by killing Australia's tech industry so the government realises how much they just shot themselves in the feet (if you can't buy an iPhone from Apple in Australia I guarantee there will be riots -- that's just what it takes unfortunately). But if you're an employer you should make your employees whole -- because doing otherwise will result in lawsuits.
It wouldn't really be unfair (of the business) though. It'd be more a case of legislation making the operating environment untenable, thus the business having to let go of Oz staff.
That's not the business's fault, as much as the situation clearly sucks.
But the business can decide how they'd lay off all their employees, and a proper severance (and transition period) and so on would be the reasonable way to do it. There is an unfair (retaliatory) way to do it too, and that's what I was referring to.