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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

> you guys could perhaps put a firewall rule to drop all incoming traffic to the VPN

How could you ever trust an employee who did this with their access privileges?

The same could be said about a CEO who cuts everybody with 10% and gets a huge bonus at the same time. I'm not disagreeing with you, though.

It was not at the same time. The bonus was paid in December, before the pandemic.

Thanks, that makes things different. I should've looked better at this particular case!

Regardless of timing or events, the 30mil individual bonus was still taken while 10% of employee's salaries were cut. That's excessive and a slap in the face to those employees.

No-one could have predicted this pandemic and the drastic measures companies have to take. When they paid the bonus they had no idea they would have to cut salaries a few months later. The timing is essential since one event happened before the pandemic and one afterwards. We could argue about bonuses in general but that's a whole different topic.

But perhaps, just perhaps, the CEO could take $2M as bonus and save $28M for a rainy day?

A rainy day will arrive sooner or later - whether it is a pandemic or an economic crisis or a dry spell in additional funding, etc.

I agree but that's a whole different discussion. We can criticize bonuses in general but making this company a particular scapegoat is just wrong.

I am not sure what is so particular about this company that the CEO deserved 30M, while neglecting to have a rainy-day fund, just like any reasonable business should. With 30M of bonus, it does not seem like the company was struggling last year?

I don't think any bonus at that level is deserved but just look at how many healthy companies that apparently didn't have a rainy-day fund and are already struggling.

So the bonus has been returned?

Maybe? The discussion has derailed from a misrepresentation of facts to people holding on to their anger and finding unrelated ways to slander the company. They gave a bonus, then corona hit and they had to cut salaries, like so many other companies have.

If you ask me I think all bonuses should be returned but again, nothing uniquely evil about this company.

Hurting the company is the point of this kind of protests, but you shouldn't do it alone with your company credentials for sure.

Some employers may want to fire the people who organize the protests, but in France the employees representatives are more protected than others and you can't fire them easily. It has pros and cons.

How protected is this kind of direct action? If it's ok to disrupt the company's services is it also ok to disclose or destroy customer data? Where does the law draw the line?

I've heard about workers in France literally kidnapping and stripping the clothes from their bosses and it being tolerated. I think that kind of thing is never tolerable under any civil circumstance. If a co-worker tried to kidnap me I'd see that as a threat to my life and I'd be fighting for survival.

You cannot be fired if you protest in a reasonable way yes. Disclosing or destroying customer data is not acceptable no. I'm not a law expert so I cannot tell you were the line is. I guess nobody really knows precisely.

Kidnapping is for sure not acceptable. Stripping the clothes as well, it was very criticized everywhere in the world including France when the AirFrance HR cunt got his shirt destroyed. If you work in France in the future, don't be scared about being kidnapped by your co-workers. It's very unlikely, especially if you are not a bad CEO, and I don't remember physical harm happening. I'm not saying it's acceptable, but it's a very small risk and you should not dismiss the benefits of protesting for only a few protests that went wrong over the last 10 years.

> and it being tolerated

Well the persons responsibles for stripping the Air France HR guy got 3 to 4 months jail sentences, so I don't know if I would call that "tolerated".

At the same time, in the US there's litterally an idiom for starting to kill your coworkers if I'm correct : "going postal".

So, overall, I prefer the most violent thing to happen at work to be shirt stripping.

How could you ever trust an employer who cuts salaries, but awards themselves a bonus?

The bonus was paid in December.

In France, employees don't earn the trust of the CEO, the CEO earns the trust of the employees.

I don't know how other employees could trust an employee abusing their privileges like that, either.

It's fine if it's a common decision among active employees.

I don't think that's fine at all - seems a terribly unethical thing to do and completely indefensible.

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