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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

#271

Post by xxs »

refurb wrote: post #108
fsloth wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This works both ways - employee can quit any time too." I think employees have been allowed to quit at any time since the early 20th century in most western countries. Of course there is a probationary period involved, but it's nothing like earlier times when police would possibly come and take you to your place of work, or it was illegal to be unemployed in several jurisdictions up to 20th century (e.g. USSR) etc.…

When I worked in Europe I had to give 3 months notice. If I left before that I had to pay the company the equivalent salary . So let’s say I leave after 1 month of giving notice. I now owe the employer 2 months salary.

Which country was that (as it doesn't feel real)? Due to power imbalance the employee is virtually never obliged to pay anything aside cases of disciplinary actions/malpractice.

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

#272

Post by nness »

paulddraper wrote: post #249
netcan wrote: post #135

Fwiw... As a tendency, Irish labour courts tends to find in favour of employees... but also tend to award relatively small compensation. A headline making award is pretty rare. Judge must not be a Twitter fan.

The judge is biased by social media?

It wasn't a court case so they're were no judges, per se. The WRC is a state agency who presides over industrial relations.

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

#273

Post by giaour »

psychlops wrote: post #231
maxehmookau wrote: post #115

Good. The richest man in the world doesn't get to be above the law on account of being rich. If you own a company, that comes with responsibility and if you shirk those responsibilities the law will come for you; as it should.

Consider that the commission is also pushing US companies to avoid Ireland.

That's an incredible leap.

The commission is pushing US companies to avoid breaking employment law in Ireland. Companies that believe the law is unfairly attacked against them or who were planning on ignoring the law might be deterred from opening up shop in Ireland, but how many companies does that describe?

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

#274

Post by WrongAssumption »

Fokamul wrote: post #23
withinboredom wrote: post #14

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…

Unlimited vacation was actually pioneered in the U.S., and spread from there. Most famously popularized by Netflix in its early days, but popular in law firms before that.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/nq2ph2/i_r...

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

#275

Post by [deleted] »

b112 wrote: post #31
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. There may be some truth to this, but it's not as stark as some think. The average cost of a "moderate" house in.. say, Palo Alto is around $3M USD. Those are typically older houses, smaller lots, less desirable neighbourhoods. Everything is more expensive in such an area. Property tax on that $3M USD house is likely going to be about $…

[deleted]

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

#276

Post by busterarm »

deskr wrote: post #260
asah wrote: post #80

Good luck collecting: X is notorious for stiffing on debts.

I'd assume Ireland has something like bailiffs in the UK. Delta tried not paying around £3000 owed to a customer. He got a court order and sent bailiffs who went to the airport, closed the checking and said they were going seize the plane to pay for the debt. There's a good short documentary about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QSj9odUD_c&t=320s . This link starts at 320 seconds, where the action starts. S…

What physical assets does X have in Ireland to seize? The Fenian street office in Dublin is leased and TikTok took over most of that space anyway.

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

#277

Post by HelloMcFly »

pintxo wrote: post #238
elteto wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are not “strange”, whatever that means. The US has overall worse protections than the EU, that’s it. It sucks, we all know that. There’s no need to appeal to some weirdness argument.

I guess people in Europe find it strange that people in the US are willing to accept the status quo there?

Presumably, you think we should what? Take the to the streets? Standard of living of food security is still far too high generally for this to seem reasonable for most.

Shall we lobby our representatives? This does happen at the state level, and accordingly many states have more pro-worker policies and laws. But change at the federal level is a substantially harder thing to bring.

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

#278

Post by mark-r »

lmkg wrote: post #205
withinboredom wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> accrued vacation where you may be forced to take vacation to not lose it. I don't look at it that way. If you have accrued vacation, you "earned" your vacation and they can't take it away from you without compensation. Thus, you are guaranteed your days off. If they fire you, they should even have to pay you your salary for those vacation days. "Unlimited" vacation just gives all the control to your employer: the r…

> If you have accrued vacation, you "earned" your vacation and they can't take it away from you without compensation... If they fire you, they should even have to pay you your salary for those vacation days. This is the law in California but not most other states. In most states, vacation time is a benefit that can expire, evaporate, or be rescinded. The company is just deciding not to assign you job duties during yo…

Nebraska goes a step further. Lots of companies have a "use it or lose it" policy for vacation time, so they won't have a ton of liability on the books. Nebraska courts have declared that vacation time is compensation that can't be taken away from you, so "lose it" isn't an option. I worked for a company with half its workforce in Nebraska even though I'm in Minnesota. To comply with the law, the company didn't pay out your vacation at the end of the year - they locked you out and forced you to take it, now.

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

#279

Post by mark-r »

paulddraper wrote: post #245
cr1895 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>US companies must pay out vacation time when employment terminates Doesn't that depend on the state?

It does, but I've never seen any company that doesn't pay for accrued time.

As I understand it, the company merely needs to be consistent. Either they pay everybody for their accrued time, or they pay nobody.

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

#280

Post by playingalong »

fhd2 wrote: post #73
userbinator wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic principle is --- you work, you get paid. If you're not working, you're not getting paid. Anything additional is a bonus at the discretion of the employer.

That's where I suppose the US and EU truly differ. The US generally goes for the "the market will solve it" approach. If you're a bad employer, nobody wants to work there, the company goes down and the competition wins. It's a beautiful theory IMHO. The EU approach is sort of the same, but to add regulation on top to steer the market towards specific goals, like having a strong middle class. If, for example, a compan…

I am not sure all these rules are for stronger middle class. I have always thought these are for low-paid workers at a warehouse, cleaning the streets, or alike. They are way more replaceable than some specialist. Yet the state offers protection for their time off which they deserve.
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