Twitter has been accused of actively ignoring Irish labour laws following massive layoffs in the last two weeks.
The multimillion-dollar firm slashed tens of thousands of jobs around the globe in a major crisis for the IT sector. Twitter laid off as many as half of its global workforce last week.
The firm has come under fire after employees were locked out of their emails and were left unable to do their jobs even though their job was yet to be terminated under the collective redundancy process.
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Last week, Twitter employees whose jobs are at risk were locked out of their emails and systems and therefore prevented from doing their work. Labour spokesperson on workers’ rights, Senator Marie Sherlock, said: "The fact that some employees were notified while others were not is proof that the employer had already decided who should be made redundant, but this is one of the principal issues that is meant to be the subject of negotiation and agreement during the 30 day standstill period.
"It is not in compliance with the law to make a pre-emptive announcement, pause for 30 days and then implement something that has already been decided." She added: "Under the 1977 Protection of Employees act, the whole point of the 30-day consultation period is that the status quo is retained and under Irish employment law, employers have no contractual right to lock workers out.
"The actions by both companies show a disgraceful disregard for the workers themselves and for Irish labour law." Additionally, she said there were "serious concerns" about the redundancy packages being proposed.
She said: "We know that staff working in sales and advertising have expressed a major worry that severance pay will not be based on their expected earnings inclusive of commission and other sales-based rewards. Added to that, workers with less than two years’ service have no entitlement to statutory redundancy in this country."
She called on the Government to do "all it can to prevent the indecent dumping of jobs across the tech industry".
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