Twitter has been ordered to pay a record €550,000 compensation to a former senior Ireland-based executive by the Labour Relations Commission in an unfair dismissal case.
The WRC heard that the social media giant, now known as X, determined that employees had resigned after they failed to tick a box requiring them to agree to new, unspecified pay and conditions within a one-day deadline in response to a November 2022 email from the company’s new owner, Elon Musk.
In an email to “Fork In The Road,” the billionaire told employees, “To build a groundbreaking Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, you’re going to have to be extremely hard core. This means working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will pass.”
Musk then asked employees to click “Yes” on a link at the bottom of the email. [sic] “If this is not completed by tomorrow at 5pm ET, you will be paid three months’ severance,” the email read, and concluded by saying, “Whatever decision you make, we thank you for your hard work in making Twitter a success.”
Musk did not testify, despite plaintiff Gary Rooney’s request that the WRC use its powers to compel him to attend as a witness. Lauren Wegman, Twitter’s senior director of human resources, told the WRC that the “watershed” email was sent to 270 employees in Ireland, of whom 235 clicked “yes”. Ms Wegman said there were no changes to the pay and duties of these staff.
She did not accept the idea that a reasonable person would have understood that her pay was being reduced on the basis of the information that had been made public.
Looney claimed he was fired by Twitter International Unlimited for not clicking “yes” when responding to Musk’s email, and he said the company then refused to negotiate with him or his lawyers.
Rooney’s lawyers said accepting Twitter’s argument that failing to tick the box constituted resignation “would represent a fundamental change in Irish employment law”.
But the company argued that Looney knew clicking “yes” to Musk’s “clear and straightforward” email would have resulted in his resignation, but made a deliberate decision not to do so.
In a 73-page judgment, WRC adjudicator Michael McNamee concluded that Rooney’s employment was terminated solely because he did not click “yes” to the email. McNamee said that decision not to click “yes” did not constitute a resignation act.
A WRC source said Rooney was available to do his job but had been blocked from accessing it by Twitter.
He found that Twitter’s allegedly erroneous acceptance of the plaintiff’s resignation amounted to a dismissal “both in fact and in law.”
McNamee said the firing was wrongful because there was no substantial basis to justify terminating Rooney’s employment, and he determined that Rooney’s failure to click “yes” did not cause or contribute to his firing.
He said that even if HR support was readily available, taking 24 hours to respond to an email does not constitute “reasonable notice” to allow an employee to make an informed decision about how to respond. “An employee faced with this situation cannot be blamed for refusing to be forced to give their unconditional unconditional consent to any of the proposals,” McNamee said.
A WRC official said Musk’s email appeared to be an attempt to secure consent for changes to employment terms or to solicit volunteers for redundancies.
Evidence in the case was heard over five days of hearings at the WRC from November 2023 to May 2024.
Twitter denied that Looney was fired and claimed he was 100% responsible for the loss by not clicking “yes” to Musk’s email.
Rooney is understood to have stepped down from his role as director of Source to Pay on November 18, 2022 after more than nine years at Twitter.
The WRC heard that a proposed severance agreement worth €22,834 was given to him on 7 December 2022, which would be withdrawn if not approved within two weeks. His employment would officially end on 18 December 2022.
The claimant’s total remuneration at that time was €369,937, including a basic salary of €137,000 and a performance-related bonus of 30 per cent.
After being terminated by Twitter, Rooney was unable to find comparable employment but eventually started work at the bank in September 2023 on an annual salary of €129,897, including a base salary of €104,500.
His lawyers argued that the €739,874 losses exceeded the maximum allowable under law for unfair dismissal and therefore he was entitled to the maximum amount of compensation – two years’ worth.
McNamee ordered Twitter to pay Rooney a total of 550,131 euros in compensation for unfair dismissal, which he said was calculated based on an estimated 200,000 euros of lost future earnings. The WRC also dismissed as “without merit” a separate claim that Rooney was entitled to a performance bonus for 2022.
The previous largest award in an unfair dismissal case at the WRC was the €440,000 that technology company Hyph Ireland (formerly Xhail Ireland) was ordered to pay to musician, composer and entrepreneur Mick Kealy after he was sacked as the company’s chief executive in 2021, earlier this year.
But Philip Smith, the former chief executive of RSA Insurance, was awarded a total of €1.25 million in compensation by its predecessor, the Employment Appeal Tribunal, in 2015, the largest amount awarded in two years.