The twitter bought by Elon Musk and renamed to X platform has recently become a subject of a historical legal decision as it unveiled some of the rather questionable and revolutionary actions conducted during his tenure. The company has been to court recently and has been charged an amount of over Rs 5 crore (over €550, 000) as a damages to Gary Rooney, a former senior employee whose unfair dismissal case cost the company a fortune.
When Musk finally acquired Twitter in October 2022, he established significant shifts in the company’s policies through redistribution of the workforce – cutting it down to the level of 30%. Then, to reorganize the company, Musk initiated a new stressful work ethic known as “Twitter 2.0.” Workers received the option to either agree to the new conditions or be severed with little to no severance pay upon dismissal.
Rooney has been working at Twitter since 2013 and was the director of “source-to-pay” at the company’s Dublin office, and she did not take the offer. Consequently, he was told that he was to be resigned, and he was removed from the company’s systems in days. Rooney disagreed with the above decision by stating the following, he had not tendered a resignation, nor had he agreed to any separation package.
The case was heard before Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) which gave its verdict in Rooney’s favour. WRC said that it was unreasonable for Twitter to give only 24 hours for such an important decision. This amounts to €550,131 which is one of the largest fines for unfair dismissal in Ireland and also is in respect of Rooney’s loss of earnings now and in the future.
This ruling raise some legal and ethical issues concerning enforcement of large organizations under very public leadership, more specifically concerning employment rights and fairness. Rooney’s solicitor pointed out that the ruling conveys the message to everyone including Musk who topped the list of the world’s richest men that nobody is out of the law when it comes to unfair treatment of the employees. When asked for a comment, Twitter answered as a canned message saying that their management was too busy to give fuller comment.
