I think this is one of the very few times I've seen Elon Musk's companies lose a lawsuit.
With all the jockeying in the US, I wonder if this is a sign of more, meaningful, legal trouble to come.
X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
81–90 of 474 posts
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You are effectively buying those labour protections with the difference in salary. Yes. And I appreciate those labor protections enough that I gladly pay for them. I could still buy a car, a house, raise a family, have some savings, etc. The stability and security provided by the labor protections are very much appreciated, a lot more than some extra cash would be.
And the money is not the only problem, Europe is CHEAP compared to America, it's fascinating. I heard that wges are less than 50% but you end up saving more
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Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that you can still get fooled or bullied into accepting a bad deal. I suggest everyone working in the EU to learn their rights and to consult a lawyer when something doesn't feel right, doesn't cost much here, initial consultations are often even free. Don't sign something put in front of you before you had a chance to understand your position. The person who wants you to sign it had ample time to do t…
> “I suggest everyone working in the EU to learn their rights and to consult a lawyer when something doesn't feel right, doesn't cost much here, initial consultations are often even free” In many European countries unions provide free legal support. Join the union even if things are good for you now, and you don’t have to go hunting for legal help if one day you feel like your employer isn’t being fair.
In the UK ACAS provide free support as well.
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#84If this is allowed, the concept of a contract is meaningless, as all terms change whenever one party feels like it. So Musk feels to be above contract law. The whole basis for law based commerce goes out of the window. Musk's world view is incredibly dangerous for a law based country. This means €550k is a way to low number as punishment. It might be enough as restitution for the employee, but an additional, much str…
It's even worse, he can get out of paying that in a number of ways. If he simply refuses to pay, the employee needs to sue. He can play for time and later declare bankruptcy in the European subsidiaries that have too many legal costs racking up. IANAL, so I might be wrong about some of this, but I did see things play out like this. The employee OTOH has probably had to deplete quite a few savings to afford to go thro…
> He can play for time and later declare bankruptcy in the European subsidiaries that have too many legal costs racking up.
Indeed, but payments awarded by courts generally rank very high in priority in bankruptcy proceedings, and he can also apply for garnishment against Twitter's bank accounts in the meanwhile.
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm so glad most European countries have robust labour laws which often favour the employee in case of doubt, not the employer. This type of behaviour - unilaterally changing the employment agreement without even specifying them in their entirety! - should never be possible. I hope other employees and EU countries follow suit and slap X with more fines, if this impacted other citizens as well.
The problem is that you can still get fooled or bullied into accepting a bad deal. I suggest everyone working in the EU to learn their rights and to consult a lawyer when something doesn't feel right, doesn't cost much here, initial consultations are often even free. Don't sign something put in front of you before you had a chance to understand your position. The person who wants you to sign it had ample time to do t…
Not sure about germany or other countries but in France any contractual change that specifically make the employee position worse without any clear return is essentially voided in "prud'hommes" (the workers/companies justice court) unless they were warned in advance of a negociation meet and brought their representative with them (any company above 10 must have one, and more and more as the company grow).
Also, any major change need to be in counter signed writing, it cannot be a one way thing, not even a "we both agreed" even if it's true.
As an employer myself it sometimes lead to seemingly absurd situation where you need heavy procedures for a simple change, but the end result is that no worker is screwed this way in a way that would stick in court (it still does happen, mostly in areas where people don't go to court after, of course).
A specific kind of deal is the "the company is going south, we make a collective agreement like eg no firing and no dividends and workers agreed to reduced hours or salary for X months" things like this, and in Twitter case it could be what they should have used, but again these have clear procedures and steps to be considered legal and not abuse by the employer, and as you can imagine a middle of the night email with no representation does not fit at all.
I know Musk is a know it all that believe he is so smart and better that he doesn't need to listen to the competent persons around, but I wished I could be a fly on the wall in the company's lawyer room that day, just for the absurdity of it (I imagine it was sort of "we can pretend it's ok, or we can tell him and be fired too").
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#86It’s really hard to know what to think about Elon Musk these days. At a surface level he’s acting a real asshole in a bunch of ways, but he’s surprised us with some seriously useful stuff on a number of occasions and so I’m always still hoping that there’s got to be a method to the madness. I sure hope there is because the guy is in the running for most powerful man in history.
He can be both an excellent business/technical mind, and a massive asshole with a fragile ego. Hell, you could argue those things go together more often than not!
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#87If this is allowed, the concept of a contract is meaningless, as all terms change whenever one party feels like it. So Musk feels to be above contract law. The whole basis for law based commerce goes out of the window. Musk's world view is incredibly dangerous for a law based country. This means €550k is a way to low number as punishment. It might be enough as restitution for the employee, but an additional, much str…
It's even worse, he can get out of paying that in a number of ways. If he simply refuses to pay, the employee needs to sue. He can play for time and later declare bankruptcy in the European subsidiaries that have too many legal costs racking up. IANAL, so I might be wrong about some of this, but I did see things play out like this. The employee OTOH has probably had to deplete quite a few savings to afford to go thro…
Intentionally draining money to force a bankruptcy and void debt is a felony in most places. Of course an army of lawyers might make that case go away.
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the main reason I chose to move to Europe instead of the US, despite potentially making more money in the US. I very much appreciate the labor protections in most EU countries.
You are effectively buying those labour protections with the difference in salary. Companies could even offer that as an option. We pay you $97k with no labour protections, or $68k but we promise to give you all the labour rights that Germany has, including nice long holidays, unions, no unpaid overtime, can't be fired without cause, etc. Your choice. (And those figures are the median programmer salary in the USA and…
Belgian healthcare started like that. First, workers personally kept apart a part of their wages. Then people in 1 factory pooled their money together. Then clusters of factories united into 'verbonden', a union-like construct . These where, like a lot of things at the time, grouped by world view:. Christian, socialist, ...
After a while, the governement wanted in, joined the verbonden to landsbonden (Country level insurers grouped by world view) and put themselves in the money stream.
The end result is Belgium having a weird construction half way between private health insurance and country-level health insurance.
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that you can still get fooled or bullied into accepting a bad deal. I suggest everyone working in the EU to learn their rights and to consult a lawyer when something doesn't feel right, doesn't cost much here, initial consultations are often even free. Don't sign something put in front of you before you had a chance to understand your position. The person who wants you to sign it had ample time to do t…
> “I suggest everyone working in the EU to learn their rights and to consult a lawyer when something doesn't feel right, doesn't cost much here, initial consultations are often even free” In many European countries unions provide free legal support. Join the union even if things are good for you now, and you don’t have to go hunting for legal help if one day you feel like your employer isn’t being fair.
In France it's mandatory in a company to have a "company union", after 10 employee it's one representative (employee who has part of his paid time dedicated to employees support functions, and it grows to more and more the more employees there is.
Whether those representative act on their own, or join a national union or syndicate, is their own decision, and they're elected every 4 years.
Any meeting or importance between an employee and his employer, he can request one of the representative be present to assist him (and in some type of meeting, it is pretty much mandatory to avoid employer pressuring against).
Etc etc ...
Our system is far from perfect, but at least having SOMEONE in the company to turn to seem to make sense to me.
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#90I am glad to hear that workers rights are being enforced in Europe. As an employee in Germany, it sounds deranged to receive an email saying I have one day to completely change my work contract, or be fired from my job.
I'm so glad most European countries have robust labour laws which often favour the employee in case of doubt, not the employer. This type of behaviour - unilaterally changing the employment agreement without even specifying them in their entirety! - should never be possible. I hope other employees and EU countries follow suit and slap X with more fines, if this impacted other citizens as well.
Unemployment is low, rapidly aging society. Any company that treats it's people this way will find their workers looking for greener pastures.