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Comment by mattmcknight | Hacker News Reader

misleading headline. "They fired me for allegedly taking pictures or videos — but they didn’t know, because no one saw it — when the body of Dariusz, a colleague of mine who had died during his shift, was moved to the hearse, which they considered inconsistent with their values and social standards."

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I interpreted that to be the legal excuse given for an illegal firing, of which Amazon could not substantiate.

Yeah it seems pretty obvious that they wouldn't go on the record to say it was a retaliatory firing

> but they didn’t know, because no one saw it

The English is a little confusing - "they fired me for allegedly taking pictures or videos — but they didn’t know, because no one saw it" implies she admits she did take pictures/videos of the dead colleague but Amazon couldn't have known.

If she had had taken photos and shared them with police to prove an accident or bad working practices fair enough, but otherwise I think I would have sacked her too if there was even anecdotal evidence that she had taken photos.

Firing someone based on hearsay?

Hearsay != statement of fact

"People are innocent until alleged to be involved in some type of criminal activity." - John Brennen, CIA Director Emeritus

For one this is a private company, two there is little doubt they did it.

Taking photos at work is almost always a bad idea. I do it for stuff like recording how a bunch of cables are connected to a server so I can put them back, but anything that includes identifiable locations, brand names, and employees is potential trouble.

Should you be fired if there is anecdotal evidence that you commit misconduct?

It depends on how anecdotal. A grainy surveillance camera, or colleagues saying she did it, or the photos had appeared somewhere then yes.

If that anecdotal evidence can't be corroborated or substantiated, certainly not.

There’s no implication in her statement that she did it. Her statement is neutral on that. You’re reading more into it than is there.

there certainly is...

i think it was not intentional

I don't think it's intended to imply she did it; there's a language barrier that is probably confusing things. But "I allegedly did it but they don't know because they didn't see me do it" absolutely implies she did.

e: (because she is only denying the existence of evidence and could just as easily deny the claim itself)

“Finally, the judge stated that my dismissal could have been caused by my activity. What I was accused of in terminating the contract was not proven during the case. Amazon didn’t manage to provide any evidence to support their position.”

“That is actually what the judge said: that there is a conflict between labor and employer, but the conflict cannot be an argument to dismiss union members.”

So, they failed to prove she was the one that took the pictures. It's a presumption to directly state she was fired for speaking out.

It's unclear (probably some language barrier issues) if she was essentially saying "I did take pictures and videos, but there's no way Amazon could have known I did that", or if she was saying "I didn't take pictures and videos, but Amazon is using that as an excuse to fire me".

But even if it's the former, so what? Assuming she was taking those pictures and videos with the intent to document what was going on in case there was something improper, Amazon absolutely should not be permitted to fire her because of it.

Even if she was taking pictures because she's a gossip and wanted to share them with people because it's just generally shocking to see someone die like that... well, I'm still sympathetic to the idea that she was actually fired because she was complaining about the working conditions, and the pictures she took were just a convenient excuse.

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