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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

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "claim unemployment" mean in this context?

Unemployment insurance is a form of insurance in US that pays you if you lose your job due to layoffs and other conditions. It is paid by you so it is not “welfare.” It is managed by each state independently and has some rules. For example, if you lose you job today and “don’t claim” unemployment insurance for two weeks, those two weeks are not paid out to you (this is in Texas). Every week, you must show that you ar…

At least in my state, the employee does not pay unemployment insurance tax, but the amount the employer pays is usually reported on the paystub. That is, if you are paid $85,000 salary it won't be reduced by the unemployment tax. However, some economists treat all payroll taxes as effectively paid by the employee out of "total compensation".

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

#312
post #23

Earlier 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…

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...

It's not actually unlimited. In fact, by not providing a fixed amount, and calling it unlimited, it lets managers put peer pressure onto people into taking less vacations than if they'd made a fixed amount!

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

#313
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Enough states require it that most companies large enough to be multistate in employment go ahead and standardize it into their policies.

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

#314
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most EU countries it is mandatory minimum to give 4 paid weeks off per year, otherwise the company is breaking the law. And maternity leave obviously is almost a year, paid, not 2 weeks unpaid. I find it hard to justify living in a place that cares so little about its people. I get its your home country, but I mean, if your home country is actively hostile towards you, why stay?

Language, culture, family, friends, and missing awareness that conditions elsewhere might be actually better, to name a few?

Also, not everyone has the resources to move to another country.

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

#315
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.

They have to pay compensation based on salary and tenure time. Most likely the salary in this case was higher than an average Irish salary. Moreover firing without warning tends to increase the severance benefits even more, which is also why it is relatively rare.

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

#316

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.

My German co-workers have the healthiest relationship with work in the company because it seems they feel empowered to set boundaries. I often wonder if it's a commonality in Germany? It doesn't seem like perfection, they complain about things too, but it seems healthier to a degree from this vantage.

And it's amazing how much nonsense they don't have to deal with just because The business will make the Americans do it so as to avoid a works council hassle :P I'd like a works council that makes my management pause before they load me up with extra work on top of my normal tasks.

What's sad is the people who get frustrated by the German's not having to deal with the bullshit and instead of thinking "we should have that!" they think "They should NOT have that!"

humans are weird.

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

#317
post #23

Earlier 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…

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...

Americans are assumed to not make use of much of any of that unlimited vacation, whereas in europe it's actually ok to

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

#318
post #260

Earlier 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.

Not sure how many staff there are left in IE, but if we assume 200 and with a laptop resale rate of maybe ~€1K that’s a third of the way towards the repayment.

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

#320
post #23

Earlier 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.

And when you quit you don't get unused vacation days paid out! Unlimited PTO is worse for employees than a prefixed number of days per year.
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