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

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

#181
post #165
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

> 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. In Germany, that's called "Betriebsrat" (something like "company council") with pretty much the same purpose. And then there's the "Gewerkschaft", which are unions not fo…

I think that the standard translation into UK English of “Betriebsrat” is “Works Council” [1].

I’ve never been highly convinced by these organs, since they seem to be colonised by folks who want to become Very Difficult to Fire, and who ultimately fold to any poorly thought-through management decision that impacts the lives of employees.

I’ve come to that both as an individual contributor and as a senior manager, but YMMV.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council

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

#182

I 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.

Ireland has an organisation called the Workplace Relations Commission, anyone can log a complaint against their current or former employer without getting the lawyers involved. The case gets reviewed and if warranted a payment can be required. I believe this case was their highest ever award.

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

#183
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Unpaid two weeks of matternity leave" are you nuts? Holy sh.. "vacation longer than three weeks requires the company to stop paying your salary" What? Why is it called vacation then, I cannot comprehend this at all, heh. Don't tell them some EU companies even give unlimited PAID vacation, lol. Never experienced this myself, because I usually have "only" 5 weeks paids vacation, but unlimited HO. Of course in practice…

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

#184
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Frankly, I am European and I know what I'm talking about. It seems obvious that there is a conflict between protecting workers' rights and giving companies the freedom to decide what's best for them. On the other hand there is a dearth of dynamic and successful startups in Europe and it's hard to imagine that workers protection have nothing to do with it- also because in my own country I have seen countless times excessive workers protections slowly suffocate a company, until both the jobs and the entire business are lost.

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

#185
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Such rage bait argument with no real arguments don't help to improve my perception.

Care to reply with opposing facts? Literally the only German tech firm of note I’m aware of is [ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirecard_scandal ]. Do you have some opposing examples?

I'm mean you can Google it. I expect more from a random HN user.

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

#188

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 think it's pretty easy, he's obviously a far-right libertarian that rejoices at the riots in England, posts antisemitic tropes on the social network he bought for some dozens of billions of dollars so that he could keep other far-right bigots online for reasons of "free speech", he's a rich, dangerous racist with a deep coffer.

I mean, possibly the American definition of ‘libertarian’ has finally been diluted to ‘literally nothing’, but I’d find it hard to call Musk’s embrace of Trump, the authoritarian, particularly libertarian.
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