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)?
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X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
281–290 of 474 posts
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#282Earlier 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.
Yes this is by law but if the employer is willing it's always possible to agree to immediate termination. The law is there to protect both sides in case of disagreements only, does not limit otherwise.
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
I have "unlimited" vacation here in the states. If you go over three weeks, they still require special paperwork, but they allow it if you are tenured enough. What unlimited means is "as long as your manager is decent, you will maybe get your days off" vs accrued vacation where you may be forced to take vacation to not lose it.
My last office job had unlimited vacation and I never used it (not did most of my coworkers) and at the end of the year you neither had the days taken off nor had you accrued any credit for I taken time.
At the job before that I had accrued 6 weeks of PTO, which was the max. I took every other Friday off after that and was paid out a month and a half when I left the company. Everyone understood the situation, so it wasn’t looked down upon when I was gone every other week.
My perspective was that unlimited PTO was a scam to reduce vacation time. Most people are not going to take advantage of it, so the company benefits.
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Well, what about bank accounts then? Can be seized too.
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#285Earlier 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 they fire you, they should even have to pay you your salary for those vacation days. This is required in the US. That's the point of unlimited vacation - since it doesn't accrue, the company doesn't have to pay it out when you leave.
It is not required in the US as it varies by state.
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#286Earlier 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 is a marketing bullshit. Can I work for 3 months there and go for vacation for another 9 months? Not really. Then it not unlimited.
To have it really unlimited you need a special position, like be a relative of CEO. But in that case you can have the same even with limited vacation policy.
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#287Earlier 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…
I wonder if the development of maternity leave sort of happened backwards from how we typically think of it happening. Like most people talk about it as if culturally we used to expect 0 accommodations for working mothers, which was bad, and the expectation has increased over time. But, actually in the past the mother would have spent many dedicated years with the infant/baby/toddler/child, until they entered school.…
> If the mother has multiple children, it’s not really practical for a company to hold their spot open for like 8 years and I don’t think this happens even in the most progressive of European countries.
Almost no one in Europe has 8 children but I know women who went on maternity leave 3 times. Generally kills your career as you don‘t advance during those years (and most only work part time afterwards) but the original job is still there.
Especially in very large companies, it‘s not too big of a burden. Just some extra slack in headcount planning. It‘s pretty rough in smaller companies. I used to sit on the board of pre-school. 5-6 employees, all women, lots of pregnancies and with the added twist that if they didn‘t have certain childhood diseases or vaccinations, they weren‘t allowed to work the entire pregnancy. We had to hire a lot of folks on temporary contracts.
Worth pointing out, while we had to pay the salary in case of work not being permitted and the time no work is allowed for anyone pregnant (6 weeks before birth and 8 weeks after), this is fully reimbursed trough insurance schemes every company has to pay into.
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
What about SAP?
lol. The German cope is strong here.
It doesn’t generally get included for the same reason IBM doesn’t typically get included in list of ‘tech companies’, even if they are one of the oldest actual tech companies.
Been around forever (70’s or earlier), large multinational, more about business integration and sales than any headline tech. Frankly, their tech has been a side thought for a very long time internally. It’s a blue chip that happens to involve tech, not a ‘tech company’ like any of the FAANGs. Same issue Tata/Wipro, etc. have IMO. Arguably Oracle falls in the same class too.
A parallel comment mentioned Deutsch Telecom, but they’re really not a ‘tech company’ anymore than T-Mobile, AT&T, Comcast, etc. are.
If we include it anyway, that gives Germany 2 and the US…. Several dozen? Minimum? Maybe 50ish, actually. Even if we don’t use the same broad criteria in the US.
If we use the same broad criteria in the US, probably 1/3 of the Fortune 500 qualify, if not more. Is Bank of America a ‘tech company’?
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Having more than two weeks off in a year is pretty strange. I mean, not that strange: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...
Yeah, I took July off this year and last year. Obviously that needs some up-front notice to ensure there's cover, but I tell my manager in the spring and it's fine. Americans are very, very strange and the fact they think they're normal is part of that.
There are plenty of US companies that have 4 week vacation policies. There are also plenty with "flexible" time off where in theory you can take more (but tends to converge on some common number).
Probably other US organizations (universities?) also have fairly good vacation policies.
I think what's different about the US is that the country and states tend to not mandate this stuff. This does lead to people getting exploited under certain situations where the employer has more power in the relationship. I think the US is wrong on this but seems to work for them?
Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Twitter are very likely to use some payment providers in the EU, I imagine those can be ordered to withhold part of the money owed.