Twitter has been ordered to pay a record fine of more than €550,000 (£470,000) to a former senior employee at its European headquarters in Ireland, after it was found to have dismissed him unfairly when he failed to respond to an email from Elon Musk calling on staff to be “extremely hardcore”.
When Musk paid $44bn in October 2022 for the social media platform, which he rebranded the following year as X, Gary Rooney was a director of “source-to-pay”, a procurement role, in Twitter International’s Dublin office.
Within weeks of the takeover, the billionaire sent a message to staff outlining his vision for the business.
“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” the South Africa-born entrepreneur wrote.
“This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing a grade.”
The message was known as the “Fork in the Road”, a phrase Musk deployed again this week in reference to America, during an interview late on Monday with former president Donald Trump, who the Tesla boss said offered a “path to prosperity”.
In the email, Musk wrote: “If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below,” adding that staff who did not would receive three months’ severance pay.
Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), the country’s employment tribunal, heard that Rooney did not click “yes”.
Three days later, on 19 November, he received another email from the company “to acknowledge your decision to resign and accept the voluntary separation offer”.
Rooney, who had been with the company since 2013, was told that he was deemed to have resigned on 18 November and that his access to Twitter systems had been deactivated.
A week later, he emailed Twitter to say that “at no time have I indicated to Twitter that I am resigning my position, nor have I seen any separation agreement let alone accepted one”.
In evidence to a hearing in Dublin that lasted five days, Rooney told the WRC that prior to the change of ownership that saw Musk take control of the platform, he loved his job.
Rooney said his first reaction to the “Fork in the Road” email had been disbelief and that he was initially afraid to open it for fear it was spam or malware.
After receiving the email, he wrote to a colleague on the company’s internal messaging system, saying: “I need to step away for my own sake. I’m deeply troubled by whats going on here these days.”
In a message to another colleague, Rooney said: “Twitter 2.0 won’t be for you and me.”
Twitter claimed, unsuccessfully, that Rooney’s failure to click “yes” in response to the email indicated that he had resigned voluntarily.
Its senior director of human resources, Lauren Wegman, told the hearing the email was sent to employees in Ireland who were not among 140 who had already been made redundant after the takeover. She said 235 of 270 staff who received it clicked “yes”.
In relation to the remaining 35 employees, she said: “We accepted their resignations.”
Wegman said the mood among workers at the time was mixed, with some excited about “Twitter 2.0” while others were more negative and wanted to leave.
In his findings, published in a 73-page decision document, WRC adjudicator Michael MacNamee said that 24 hours was not “reasonable notice”.
He said Rooney’s messages to colleagues outlining his reservations about Musk’s takeover “have no relevance to the question as to what brought about the termination of the complainant’s employment”.
The €550,131 total unfair dismissal award, an Irish record, is made up of Rooney’s lost remuneration of €350,131 from January 2023 to May 2024 and estimated lost future remuneration of €200,000.
Barry Kenny, a solicitor for Rooney, said he welcomed “the clear and unambiguous finding that my client did not resign from his employment but was unfairly dismissed from his job, notwithstanding his excellent employment record and contribution to the company over the years”.
He said: “It is not okay for Mr Musk, or indeed any large company to treat employees in such a manner in this country. The record award reflects the seriousness and the gravity of the case.”
An email to Twitter’s press office was met with the response: “Busy now, please check back later.”
