Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

fortune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 474 posts

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#111

Post by AnthonyMouse »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #49
londons_explore wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's not true. The higher wages in the US are not related to labour protections. They are related to vastly higher wages in tech because of big corps pushing up those wages to have the best of the best working for them. Proof is simple: Since a lot of low paying jobs in the US have no labour protections. Or look at what Tesla does in Texas, with the "unprotected" third party companies that don't have labour protect…

> Proof is simple: Since a lot of low paying jobs in the US have no labour protections.

That doesn't follow. The low paying jobs exist because the value to the employer of hiring someone exceeds the low pay. For those jobs, if the employer is required to provide paid vacation etc. then it can push the cost of hiring someone over the cost of offshoring the job or automating it, so the alternative then isn't high pay vs. low pay, it's have a job vs. no job.

Also, many of the costs are in proportion to the pay, e.g. the cost of a vacation day is the cost of paying someone else to cover, so the difference will often be a percentage rather than a fixed amount. Then it's no surprise that skilled professionals get paid more than unskilled labor, but that doesn't mean the unskilled laborers can't still be making more than they would be in the alternative where the company had higher costs to hire them.

> Or look at what Tesla does in Texas, with the "unprotected" third party companies that don't have labour protections. They are vastly worse off than those that work for Tesla ( since the country required minimum protections and Tesla didn't apply that to contractors)

They have fewer employee benefits, but in return contractors generally get higher hourly wages. One way or another they have to convince the worker to work for them instead of somebody else.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#112

Post by perlgeek »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #81

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.

Technically, this was not a lawsuit.

It was an enforcement action from the Workplace Relations Commission, and can be appealed in court.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#113

Post by hyperpape »

withinboredom wrote: post #14
fsloth wrote: post #4

Would this be legal in any jurisdiction (click-or-be-fired)? I am not familiar with US labour laws, are employees actually at the level of indentured servants considering terms of employment (which I would expect to be a contract between TWO parties)?

In the US, in most (all?) jurisdictions, your employer doesn't really need to have a reason to fire you. They can fire everyone wearing red shirts, if they wanted to. There are also very few places providing leave (outside of white-collar positions). For example, my wife was given two weeks off from her job after having my son. The state we lived in only required maternity leave to be implemented at companies having…

I believe this stunt by Elon still doesn't work in the states. It's true that if you don't sign, they are entitled to fire you, but their line that it's a voluntary resignation is still bullshit. The consequences are smaller, but they've managed to do something that doesn't even make sense in terms of US labor law.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#114

Post by fhd2 »

benreesman wrote: post #27

It’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.

I can think of two positive achievements: Pushing electric cars to the main stream (Tesla, he didn't found it, but I do believe he impacted its success dramatically) and pushing for space exploration (Space X). I find both important. Did I miss some other positive impact he's had?

I've never been a fan to be fair, and he surely didn't make it easier for me the last few years. But I think some of his potentially negative traits, incredible risk taking appetite and stubborness, propelled these two fields forward. Faster than they would have been if he wasn't around. Perhaps someone else would have done it with the same effects, I don't know.

I used to think there _must_ be method to the madness. But since the Twitter takeover and subsequent right wing transformation, I don't see it anymore. He seems way too smart to fall into a silly us-vs-them mentality. I refuse to believe he doesn't see "left" and "right" policies in a nuanced light. My only explanation is that he's going through some severe personal issues, and we're witnessing the symptoms in public. I don't like him, but I hope he can work through them and find happiness. Not just for his sake.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#116

Post by rsynnott »

Iulioh wrote: post #52
surgical_fire wrote: post #26

Earlier 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

This actually used not be the case. About six years ago I was in San Francisco for work, and was surprised how inexpensive it was. Like, it wasn’t cheap, but I’d heard it talked up as basically the most expensive place in the world, and it was largely cheaper than Dublin.

Going back recently, it’s a _lot_ more expensive; home has gotten more expensive too, but not at the same rate.

(Some of this is due to the currency thing, of course; the dollar was about as weak as it ever got post-financial crisis in 2018.)

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#117

Post by pimeys »

dento wrote: post #28
baq wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any companies who do offer such things, though?

When working remotely, you're often allowed to pick between employment and b2b contracts, which is essentially the same thing.

And in countries such as Germany you are legally required to be an employee if you only work for one company. The government will sue the company or if not reachable, they will sue the employee.

So deel.com is a usual choice.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#118

Post by lazyasciiart »

refurb wrote: post #105
consp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having short term contracts solved this a long time ago and is mostly a fallacy.

How is a short term contract a solution? It sounds like you don’t have a job at the end of the contract?

Yes, but you know when that will happen.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#119

Post by rsynnott »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #77
londons_explore wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You are effectively buying those labour protections with the difference in salary. FWIW, this is not as simple as labour protections being effectively equivalent to $29k. By being a legal requirement and not a choice, that $29k doesn't register to the market as using disposable income, so competitive pressure doesn't inflate prices of everything to compensate. It's strictly better than having a choice between $97k…

Also you are not taxed on that notional 29k, of course (this is one reason that companies often offer in excess of the statutory minimum paid leave etc; it’s essentially an un-taxable benefit). Given the choice between an extra week paid leave at your 100k a year job (notional value is ~2k) or a 2k raise, you’re probably better off taking the leave.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#120

Post by jonasdegendt »

hyperman1 wrote: post #88
londons_explore wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> ‘verbonden’

Co-op is the word you’re looking for. These co-ops went far beyond just healthcare after all. They owned bakeries, pharmacies, entertainment facilities for the workers, …

Post reply on HN