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

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

#391

Post by asadotzler » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 9:46 PM UTC

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #358

wkat4242 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the "at will" employment. It's terrible. I could never deal with that. I'm really glad for all our social protections here and it's worth the money. Also socialized healthcare <3

Bear in mind that it works both ways. I can be offered a new job tomorrow and give my current employer immediate notice that I'm never coming back. Regardless of at-will employment, the vast majority of employers will still give you plenty of warning before you're fired for performance reasons. It's mainly an issue when a company suddenly has large layoffs. And despite what you see in the media, most people are emplo…

You can quit anywhere you don't have a contract to keep working. That's not some special "TEAM USA!" feature.

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

#392

Post by soneil » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 10:26 PM UTC

tovej wrote: post #122

refurb wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it wrong for people to voice views that you disagree with? The value of HN is hearing differing view points. It would be nice if people on HN tried to engage in a good willed nature rather than treating discussions like a struggle session. But to the topic at hand, in rapidly changing sectors, high levels of friction when it comes to employment has a cost. There is no free lunch in economics. When hiring employees…

That is unbelievable to me. You always have the right to quit, and penalties are rare. The laws depend on the country you're in of course, but I've never heard of three months, and I've lived in Europe my whole life. Would you mind sharing the country you were working in?

My previous contract (Ireland) was 3 months - it was reciprocal, so they had to give me 3 months notice to quit, and I had to give them 3 months notice to quit.

Due to the position "garden leave" was the most typical way to spend those 3 months, so it wasn't much of a real-world concern.

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

#393

Post by rammer » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 10:39 PM UTC

nucleardog wrote: post #305

psychlops wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pushing US companies that don’t follow local laws to not operate there? Something tells me they’d be okay with that.

If you can't fire employees who refuse to perform at the level required or show a commitment for that then it was very right to be fired.

The staff member had a choice, agree to an increased level of commitment or decline, he obviously declined.

If companies can't decide who stays on or not, then definitely they would be more hesitant to invest / movel locations to Ireland.

This will take time and certainly one of the things considered among a thousand others when choosing a location!

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

#394

Post by psychlops » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 10:48 PM UTC

giaour wrote: post #273

psychlops wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Breaking the law isn't a meaningful part of the economic argument. X can hire employees in any country in the world. Ireland is proving itself to be more costly than a competing country and thereby pushing employment away.

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

#395

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 10:48 PM UTC

beaglesss wrote: post #227

Forgeties79 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really do not care about caregivers - or kids for that matter - in the US. It’s sad. A lot of talk about “family” and how wonderful kids are yet many companies and politicians fight tooth and nail to make sure people don’t spend time with newborns and otherwise don’t have access to childcare. I don’t have to tell parents in this thread about the “July to August gulf” when all the summer camps end and school is a f…

Sure. It's great when people have kids, but the whole scam run by society is to offload most the costs on the parent then tax the shit out the kid once they're raised, effectively creating a massive wealth transfer system away from working families. Much of the societal issues of how they deal with parents traces back to tragedy of the commons IMO since the kids are future tax stock.

[deleted]

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

#396

Post by Forgeties79 » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 10:49 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #44

Fokamul wrote: 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…

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.

Does that seem right to you?

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

#397

Post by soneil » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 10:59 PM UTC

jongjong wrote: post #131

[flagged]

You can fire, there is a process, and this wasn't it. It's that simple.

There is a huge difference between not being able to fire people, and not being able to arbitrarily fire people on the spot.

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

#398

Post by GJim » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 11:08 PM UTC

throw310822 wrote: post #184

GJim wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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 exc…

[flagged]

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

#399

Post by surgical_fire » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 11:16 PM UTC

psychlops wrote: post #394

giaour wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Breaking the law isn't a meaningful part of the economic argument. X can hire employees in any country in the world. Ireland is proving itself to be more costly than a competing country and thereby pushing employment away.

Eh, this is bullshit. Ireland always had labor laws, and most companies operating there had little problems navigating through it.

Of course, those companies were not under the whims of a moronic buffoon.

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

#400

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 11:20 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #170

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. In competitive markets prices approach the cost of production rather than absorbing all of the disposable income of the customer. If you have uncompetitive markets, that is a separate problem with its own solutions. And then y…

> In competitive markets prices approach the cost of production rather than absorbing all of the disposable income of the customer. If you have uncompetitive markets, that is a separate problem with its own solutions. All markets are a bit uncompetitive — if they were not, if they were perfectly elastic and frictionless cows in a vacuum, then not only would anyone making a profit be undercut by someone willing to mak…

> All markets are a bit uncompetitive

Oh sure, but there's a vast difference between "people make $1000 more and landlords take $0.05 on the dollar" and "people make $1000 more and landlords take $0.95 on the dollar".

Profit margins are also not inherently determined by wages in some other sector. If a bag clip costs $1 and $0.25 of that is profit and $0.75 is cost of labor, the profit margin clearly isn't zero. If nurses then get a pay raise that came out of reduced overhead rather than higher prices, the unrelated $1 item can profitably be produced for the same price it always was.

In can, indeed, go the other way. Some item is $1.00, $0.75 of that is labor, you eliminate some regulatory overhead which reduces the company's labor costs (e.g. need fewer HR/lawyers) and now the labor costs fall to $0.60. But this also reduces barriers to entry to the market, so competition increases, the profit component drops to $0.20 and now the item costs $0.80 instead of $1.00.