More trouble is on the way for Elon Musk, and it’s not about his recent interview with former US President Donald Trump. Musk-owned X (previously known as Twitter) has been ordered to pay £550,000 (approximately Rs 59 million) to a former senior staff member of the company based in Ireland, reportedly a record award by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) in a case related to unfair dismissal.
The WRC was hearing a petition in which Company X reportedly found that employee Gary Rooney had resigned because he had not ticked a box that required him to agree to a new, unspecified salary and conditions. The response was to be registered within 24 hours to an email sent by Twitter’s new buyer Elon Musk to Company X employees in November 2022.
A former senior Twitter employee was unfairly fired after his new boss failed to respond to an email to Musk urging staff to be “extremely hardcore,” a court has ruled. On November 18, 2022, Looney, who had worked at Twitter since 2013, was told he would be considered to have resigned from the company.
How did that unfold?
In October 2022, Musk bought the Twitter microblogging platform, which was later renamed X, for $44 billion. At the time, Looney was director of source-to-pay, Twitter’s procurement division in Dublin. After the acquisition, Musk sent a message to staff outlining his vision for the company.
“Going forward, it will take an extremely hardcore attitude to build revolutionary Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world,” Musk wrote in his first email as Twitter’s new chief executive. The billionaire technocrat said it would mean long hours and high intensity work, and only exceptional performance would pass muster.
In the email, X’s chief executive asked staff to click “yes” on the link below if they were sure they wanted to be part of the new Twitter. The email also said that staff who did not do so would be paid three months’ severance pay. Rooney did not click “yes” in the email and three days later, on 19 November 2022, he received another email from the company confirming his decision to resign and asking him to accept his offer of voluntary departure.
The executive was subsequently informed that he was considered to have resigned and that his access to Twitter’s systems had been suspended. A week later, Rooney emailed Twitter saying he had not notified the company of his intention to resign and had not seen or accepted a separation agreement.
Lost love and distrust
Looney told the court that he loved his job before Musk bought him, but his first reaction to the terse email was one of disbelief, admitting that he was initially afraid to open it, thinking it might be spam or malware.
At the hearing, senior director of human resources Lauren Wegman said 235 of 270 staff had clicked “yes”. Wegman added that these people were not included in the 140 who had already been made redundant. The WRC’s total unfair dismissal pay of £550,131 includes £350,131 in Rooney’s lost salary between January 2023 and May 2024, plus an estimated loss of future salary of around £200,000.
Twitter International Unlimited Company (now X) will pay compensation to Rooney after the WRC ruled that his dismissal was unfair. The court’s decision was based on a finding that Twitter wrongly considered Rooney’s resignation when he did not click “yes” in response to an email from Musk, leading to his unfair dismissal.
Following the November 2022 email, Musk fired more than 6,000 Twitter employees, roughly 80% of the company’s workforce, reportedly forcing existing employees to justify their roles and even decide whether to keep their colleagues.