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Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

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Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#51

Post by jefftk »

01acheru wrote: post #19
ifqwz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems an appropriate word... "Insubordination is the act of willfully disobeying a lawful order of one's superior." Your boss is your superior, so disobeying what he asks of you is insubordination.

> ... lawful order ... That's why it is not insubordination, the order must be lawful. Your boss is your superior but there are plenty of possible scenarios where disobeying their orders is not insubordination. Besides that, your boss is not in a position to give you orders . It is a work place not a prison or a platoon. In modern times insubordination is almost always related to military contexts.

Whether the order was lawful is exactly what the suit was about

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#52

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #3

>there was no urgent reason given to justify the immediate dismissal given.” He alleged that the termination was disproportionate Damn sweet. I wish we had such great employee protection laws in Austria, where the company/employer can terminate your employment relationship without any reason at all. >Less than a week after the plaintiff was fired, the Rijswijk branch of Chetu Inc. was deregistered from the Chamber of…

Note that it’s only the notice period that this considers. The Netherlands and Austria are the same in that you can terminate an employee without reason.

//edit: apparently that’s incorrect for the Netherlands. Must have mixed that up.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#53

Post by FooBarWidget »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #21
talideon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have missed the word "lawful".

lawful just means the order itself wasn't illegal. It doesn't mean that it's "enforcing the law" If I tell you to go buy 10 apples, refusing would be insubordination because it's legal to buy apples. If I tell you to go steal 10 apples, refusing would not be insubordination because it's legal to buy apples. Until the court ruled against them, the view of the firm would have been it was legal to require someone to hav…

There is also the word "reasonable". In civil law countries like Netherlands, that actually means something. One can argue that even if being ordered to turn on the webcam all day is not illegal, it is still an unreasonable request e.g. because it infringes on privacy too much.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#54

Post by em-bee »

nraynaud wrote: post #30
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #3

>there was no urgent reason given to justify the immediate dismissal given.” He alleged that the termination was disproportionate Damn sweet. I wish we had such great employee protection laws in Austria, where the company/employer can terminate your employment relationship without any reason at all. >Less than a week after the plaintiff was fired, the Rijswijk branch of Chetu Inc. was deregistered from the Chamber of…

Plus you can always fire anyone for any reason in the EU, just give them enough money to stomach it.

and give them at least one month notice as well as pay out their unused holidays.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#55

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #48
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not true that in Austria you can be terminated for any reason at all. There are protections in place. Not true at all what you claim about Austria. There are zero protections in place for workers here unless you're over 50 or work at a place with a union (worker's council) that will fight for you. If you work for a small tech company you have no protections against unfair dismissal. Basically your boss can tell you…

I disagree. Austria’s labor protections are fine. If you make rules around dismissals stricter then you greatly harm the ability for a company to hire in the first place. The current rules give you plenty of protection as an employee that you can find a new place of work and not suffer financially.

>Austria’s labor protections are fine

When they're objectively worse than every other EU country, bordering on competing with the US, I can hardly call them "fine".

>If you make rules around dismissals stricter then you greatly harm the ability for a company to hire in the first place.

Please stop parroting the propaganda of the conservative party (ÖVP) who are bought and paid for by the business elite and would gladly tell us working 60h/week is in our best interest. The stricter employee protections in other EU countries haven't harmed the economy or innovations there. Do you see Netherlands or Sweden doing poorly economically because of their better employee protection laws? In fact their innovation and tech sectors are far above Austria's.

Nor did the lack of employee protection laws boost Austria's economic sector. Have you looked at Austrian skilled wages? They earn the lowest wages of all the German speaking countries causing an exodus of doctors and other skilled specialists to Germany and Switzerland, while Austrian devs make Eastern European wages. So how did the lack of worker protections help with this?

Maybe fixing the needlessly complex and conservative bureaucracy and high tax burdens on employers and employees would help improve the Austrian economic sector and make it more competitive and attractive for business, instead of taking away employee rights in a race to the bottom hoping that going the sweatshop route will make it more competitive.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#56

Post by stoltzmann »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #52
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #3

>there was no urgent reason given to justify the immediate dismissal given.” He alleged that the termination was disproportionate Damn sweet. I wish we had such great employee protection laws in Austria, where the company/employer can terminate your employment relationship without any reason at all. >Less than a week after the plaintiff was fired, the Rijswijk branch of Chetu Inc. was deregistered from the Chamber of…

Note that it’s only the notice period that this considers. The Netherlands and Austria are the same in that you can terminate an employee without reason. //edit: apparently that’s incorrect for the Netherlands. Must have mixed that up.

That's incorrect. Employers in the Netherlands must have a valid reason to fire staff - see https://business.gov.nl/running-your-business/staff/dismissi...

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#57

Post by thrown_22 »

mcherm wrote: post #47
rocqua wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others said, the dutch term is probably different. Their (bad) legal argument was. He refused to follow work instructions, hence he did not perform his work as required, hence we can fire him "op staande voet" which is an on the spot firing that does not require a long process of attempting to improve employee performance. They needed a 'op staande voet' firing because the long process takes months. The justificat…

> I believe many US states have similar procedures. Most US companies follow similar procedures because they are a sensible thing to do. But 49 out of 50 US states have "at will" employment which means that employers can fire any employee at any time for no reason at all.

They have at will firing. When employees choose to leave, not so much: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/us/thedacare-lawsuit-wisc...

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#58

Post by elorm »

belter wrote: post #50
sebazzz wrote: post #36

I love it when US companies meet Dutch labor laws.

Plus cue in the shock of US Employees, when they realize his court costs to sue his employer were less than 500 dollars.

Filing fees. There's still a legal fee threshold.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#59

Post by inopinatus »

wiseowise wrote: post #32
volepole wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your boss is just some other person. If he thinks he's superior to anyone else, he can fuck right off. He'll end up as worm food just like the rest of us.

> Definition of superior (Entry 1 of 2) 1 : situated higher up : UPPER 2 : of higher rank, quality, or importance https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/superior Boss is by definition superior to your position, not in a sense better, but higher.

not higher. the graph is topologically unchanged if you draw it with the CEO at the bottom, and so on.

don’t be hoodwinked by bad analogies, or the arbitrary demands of insecure narcissists

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#60

Post by londons_explore »

gnfargbl wrote: post #4

> Less than a week after the plaintiff was fired, the Rijswijk branch of Chetu Inc. was deregistered from the Chamber of Commerce and shut down on 2 September, records show. So, it's a fair assumption that no organisation in the Netherlands is going to pay out as a result of this. What are the chances of the employee being able to enforce this judgment in a Florida court?

I believe most European countries require some kind of employee liability insurance that will end up paying this.
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