The employee admits having closed zero sales. It doesn't get much more objective than that.
They're also relatively new to the company. Unions tend to prioritize tenure over performance anyway, so their relative newness might have put them at an even higher disadvantage under a union.
> You're right that tenure is a common way of deciding who is going, but if HR had come in and said "we're really sorry but we're letting go the most recent joiners, no reflection on you other than your start date, you'll get a good reference based on your ramp up performance", that would have gone over much better.
I don't believe this at all. If this had been a TikTok where HR said "We're letting you go because you started recently" everyone would be outraged about them firing people for arbitrary, non-performance reasons.