Tech giant X has been ordered to pay an unfair dismissal award of €550000 ($600,000) to a former employee in Ireland, who was reportedly fired for not respoding to an email from Elon Musk, calling on his staff to be "extremely hardcore."
Gary Rooney used to work at the European headquarters of X in Dublin as a director of "source-to-pay," which was a procurement role, Bloomberg reported.
After taking over Twitter in 2022, Musk had sent a message to the staff members, saying, "Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore," according to The Guardian. "This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing a grade."
Musk added in the email, "If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below."
He also mentioned that the staff who did not click yes would be receiving a severance pay of three months.
Rooney told Ireland's employment tribunal, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), that he had not chosen to click yes.
The email was sent by Musk in November 2022, barely a month after the acquisition of the social media platform.
Following Musk's email, Rooney wrote to a coworker, saying, "I need to step away for my own sake. I'm deeply troubled by whats going on here these days," while telling another colleague, "Twitter 2.0 won't be for you and me."
Three days after the email was sent, Rooney received another message from the company saying that the latter was "acknowledging" his "decision to resign and accept the voluntary separation offer," The Guardian reported.
According to The Irish Examiner, Rooney replied to the email saying he did not indicate that he was resigning his position. The company, however, stuck to its decision, and reiterated that by not clicking "yes" on the email, Rooney had indicated he had resigned.
Michael MacNamee, the adjudicator for the Workplace Relations Commission, said the 24-hour window given by Musk was not a "reasonable notice," while adding that Rooney's messages to coworkers "have no relevance to the question as to what brought about the termination of the complainant's employment."
