Social media platform X (formerly Twitter) must pay a former executive more than €550,000 in compensation for unfair dismissal.
The award is a record high from the Irish Workplace Relations Commission in such a case.
Gary Rooney worked in a procurement role at the company in its Dublin office in October 2022, when tech entrepreneur Elon Musk took it over for $44 billion.
Just weeks later the company made headlines after employees were told they needed to be “extremely hardcore” and commit to long working hours if they wanted to stay.
Offices were temporarily closed while Twitter managers dealt with high numbers of resignations and reported redundancies.
In his now famous “Fork in the Road” email to staff, Musk said: “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore.”
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“This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
He then asked staff to click “yes” on a link included in the email, indicating that those who did not would receive three months’ severance pay. Rooney did not click on the “yes” button.
A tribunal in Ireland has now ruled that Rooney’s decision not to do so was not capable of constituting an act of resignation.
It said that he had been available for work but was prevented from accessing work by Twitter, and that his dismissal was unfair as there were no substantial grounds to justify his termination.
Furthermore, the failure to click “yes” on Musk’s email did not represent insubordination or a breach of contract.
Adjudication officer Michael MacNamee said that giving employees 24 hours to respond to the message could not be considered reasonable notice, even if HR support was readily available.
“No employee when faced with such a situation could possibly be faulted for refusing to be compelled to give an open-ended unqualified assent to any of the proposals,” he said.
Rooney told the tribunal he had attended a large virtual meeting on 17 November 2022 where very little information was provided about employees’ options. His systems access was then shut off the next day, when he received an automated message acknowledging his “decision to resign”.
He said that after nine years’ service to the social media giant, he did not feel a day’s notice to make a decision about his future was acceptable.
His legal counsel Arthur Cush pointed out that Twitter had stated that new working hours would include “hours outside normal business hours or on weekends”, and that those who remained with the company would have their benefits changed, but no details of this were provided.
Cush said it was “difficult to imagine a more direct form of dismissal than revoking an employer’s access to the computer system used to do his job”, and emphasised that Rooney’s employment contract had stated any resignation should be given in writing.
Rooney told the tribunal that he knew there would be consequences if he did not agree to the new terms, but he was unsure what the terms were or what the consequences would be.
Musk did not appear at the tribunal, but X’s senior director of HR Lauren Wegman gave evidence. She said Rooney’s employment would likely not have ended if he had raised a grievance within the 24-hour deadline.
She also denied that the email had been designed to reduce Twitter’s workforce, and that 235 of the 270 staff in the Irish office had clicked yes.
The €550,131 award was made up of €350,351 for loss of earnings from January 2023 to May 2024 and €200,000 for potential loss of future earnings.
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