Musk ordered to pay X employee £470k for unfair dismissal | Hacker News Reader

Musk ordered to pay X employee £470k for unfair dismissal

theguardian.com

28 pointsFluorescence7 comments

> In the email, Musk wrote: “If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below,” adding that staff who did not would receive three months’ severance pay.

> Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), the country’s employment tribunal, heard that Rooney did not click “yes”.

> Three days later, on 19 November, he received another email from the company “to acknowledge your decision to resign and accept the voluntary separation offer”.

Honestly I see Elon’s point. I don’t have much knowledge on employment law in Ireland but I can see how they took this as a resignation

"I don’t have much knowledge on employment law in Ireland" You don't but a company employing staff in Ireland is expected to hire someone that does so they can comply with the law.

Think of an employment contract as “a contract” if you wish to renegotiate a contract and the other party doesn’t choose to engage you cannot simply declare the original contract void. Because, it’s a contract and that’s how they work.

Sadly, the commenter seems to have internalized an employer's view of the world. Or the viewpoint of the behemoth companies whose contracts are always one-sidedly slanted, like cable providers, banks, etc.

Yeah but what constitutes a new contract? I don’t think anything was being renegotiated, he was saying there was new management and more may be expected of employees. You could argue he was just asking people who didn’t like Elon Musk to resign, and having a new boss doesn’t constitute a renegotiation of contract.

Obviously the court decided the dismissal was unfair, but I think it could have gone either way.

1) They basically said "we expect you to change your employment terms, hours of work and duration of work etc. Do you accept?" without communicating what would it entail, if there would be additional payments for extra work etc. 2) If the contract is not renegotiated it defaults to the previously agreed contract. One party cannot solely renegotiate it, as with any contract there must be 2 parties in agreement. 3) They gave 24 hours to respond or you automatically "resigned". This is a forced resignation, for it to be lawful it would need to have been tendered / given by the employee. It was also stated by the court that 24 hours notice is not enough time for any reasonable person to digest the information and give an informed response. 4) 3 days later he received an email stating they accepted his resignation but they would not engage with him or his legal advisors in those 3 days or after November 19th.

> “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” the South Africa-born entrepreneur wrote.

> “This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing a grade.”

This sounds more like a culture change than anything else. He’s not saying your terms of employment will change, he’s vaguely saying you’ll have to work harder. Obviously the court decided it was unfair, but I think this could have gone either way.

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