Ex-Twitter Brits launch legal challenge against dismissal UK Twitter employees included among the thousands fired when Elon Musk took control of the company have challenged their dismissal, claiming a collective consultation redundancy process currently under way isn't conforming to British law. After finalizing the $44 billion Twitter buy, Musk fired several execs including former …
...after P&O got away with essentially the same action and actually admitted they broke the law!
Something seriously broken in UK employment practice.
M.
We're coming up to the ten year anniversary of the collapse of 2e2. They sacked 300-odd folk a couple of days before the January payday without so much as a day's notice!
I strongly suspect that most of those guys would have bitten the hand off of anyone offering two weeks money for each year worked!
@Martin and all
Remember P&O were employing ship's crew. They were able to pay workers from outwith the UK less than UK minimum wage, hence the attraction of a hire and fire process. Yes, they got away with it as a result of a lack of remedy.
Lightbulb moment: perhaps Mr Musk needs to sign a treaty with Prince Michael of Sealand? Base all the companies in the Principality. Could probably fit a data centre in the lower floors. No shortage of cooling water. I'm sure Prince Michael would welcome some extra bandwidth. Ideal for satellite links.
https://sealandgov.org/
It's not all bad news for Musk. He did score at least one win so far this year – the SpaceX boss is officially one of the first Guiness World record holders in 2023. Well done.
What an honour it is to be crowned for the record of biggest loser of all time. It will surely remind future generations that it takes quite a bit of ignorance to replace his muskness' place at the bottom record.
There will probably be rather non-flattering sayings in the (near) future like "Don't try to Musk it" and "You are behaving Musk".
"It is claimed that UK-based staff were offered two months' gross basic salary, plus two weeks' gross basic salary for each year they were employed, apparently "falling short of norms in the wider tech sector"
It's significantly more than UK statutory minimum.
UK statutory minimum is not great, but sadly it's all a company needs to do for compliance on redundancy pay & "sector norms" arguments are a bit tenuous when there not that many "huge" IT companies employing decent numbers of people in the UK so cannot really argue there are established norms in that way. Generally if UK employment contracts do not mention redundancy pay structure then assumption is employer will pay statutory minimum.
Surely they would be better off finding out instances where Twitter had not followed all the required processes when making people redundant as that's the sort of thing tribunals regard as red flags (& with the rushed process & likely being US legal team led, if I was a gambler I would bet good money on some violations having occurred).
IANAL, just had experience of a perm job where mass redundancies occurred (in that case most of the new project dev work was being outsourced cheaply abroad & so they had a nice legal get out on the thorny issue of whether a job is really gone or not as technicality of jobs axed related to old completed projects). In that case payoffs were well above stat min to keep people sweet (& a few people got to do a bit of well paid consulting afterwards as (often the case on big layoffs) there was key knowledge / skills lost in the rounds of redundancies )
Perhaps it's because Twitter didn't consult within the required timeframe first and is offering less than 90 day's pay? See section 3 here.
Also, Twitter seem to have fired the person in charge of filing accounts with Companies House.
"It's significantly more than UK statutory minimum."
True, so long as all the i's have been dotted and t's crossed. Twitter didn't do that and hoped by offering more than the legal minimum would be enough to keeps the peons happy. Now, even if they follow the procedure, and enf up offering only the legal minimum, they are on the hook for compensation too, which may well add up to more than the original offer.
wrt "not that many "huge" IT companies employing decent numbers of people in the UK", well, there used to be, I'm ex-IBM and colleagues of mine went to work for HP, Google, and Amazon. We all got made redundant from IBM and HP of course,.. not sure what the numbers are like for the others now.
He has more than enough $$$ remaining to make the problem simply disappear into thin air.
The question is... Will be so brazen to try it here?
Over in the US, he has won a lot of friends in the MAGA/GQP world esp the 'former guy' for them to make his problems go away.
I wonder how long before those so called friends would stand by their man when they take issue with him being part of the much hated 'Green New Deal' which is a huge red flag to the GQP. As they are up to their slimy necks in 'Big Oil' donor money, Tesla is the big bad enemy.
Poor Mucky Musk. Those friends were only paying lip service to him.
.. and his name is Gerald Ratner, whose mistake was massive enough to make it into common parlance.
I think it's time to define what "doing a Musk" really is, though. I'd say it is believing in your own hype so much that you're willing to waste $44b of partially borrowed money on what any due diligence would have identified as something that was about to become a black hole, and then mismanaging it such to make the latter a definite reality.
I hope someone can come up with something more punchy, "being a rich moron" would be too vague and is also not exclusive to Musk.
from an interesting Tim Harford podcast on Ratner.
Ratner had worked on that speech, it wasn't an off the cuff remark and the punchline at expense of others in room that Ratners was successful because they delivered what their customers wanted was lost in the media. If he had run it by someone else, they might have pointed out the problem.
By comparison Musk seems to go off half cock without even thinking things through first beyond figuring that for any issues "there will be a technical answer" and "money will solve it"
"The UK's Employment Tribunal presides over cases from employees..."
In fact here are many tribunals (not just one), and they aren't a UK body. The English and Welsh employment tribunals are different from those in Scotland, and Northern Ireland has both industrial tribunals and a fair employment tribunal.
https://www.judiciary.uk/courts-and-tribunals/tribunals/employment-tribunal/employment-tribunal-england-wales/work-of-the-employment-tribunal/what-is-the-employment-tribunal/
https://www.employmenttribunalsni.co.uk
It sucks mightily to lose your job (had it happen a few times to me), but sometimes businesses change and you cannot say that twitter hasn't changed under Elon Musk (whether you like those changes or not). However, Elon Musk needs to follow the law like everyone else, although if he hasn't then he won't be the first.
That being said; Practically speaking, I'm not sure what else those laid off expect to get if their jobs no longer exist - unless they've been cheated out of money or something similar (beyond the proper process).
But maybe I've missed something (which is entirely possible).
Well, not seen that Twitter has broken the law as yet. I.e Yet to be determined.
On another note (and this is not aimed specifically at you):
I find it genuinely bewildering at the almost foam-at-the-mouth reactions to the Twitter and Elon Musk situation. It's almost as if people miss Trump and have found another thing to scream and rage at because social media has wound them up so much for so long. It's incredibly depressing.
not seen that Twitter has broken the law as yet
OK, so not proven in a court or tribunal, but the article is quite clear. Twitter fired (made redundant) a load of people, then afterwards started on the procedures that they are required by law to go through before firing anyone. That makes all those firings "unfair dismissal".
That the work is gone, the job is redundant, isn't under question - it's simply a case of Twitter having turned a load of simple redundancies into cases of unfair dismissal. AIUI, the ETs take "a dim view" of unfair dismissal.
From what's been reported over the last few weeks, months - I don't think there's much chance of Twitter persuading anyone that they followed the rules here. IMO, the only question will be how much the ETs tell Twitter to pay in compensation (over and above the offer they've imposed). Could be somewhat more than if they'd asked all the staff involved to take a 3 month paid holiday.
Maybe this is a wake-up call for IT workers to start unionising.
Not sure why this is so frowned upon in the tech sector.
Truth is that IT workers are not considered working class by the left and there is quite a strong voice - if you talk to Labour supporters - that the fact that tech workers earn typically more than average, they don't need to be protected by workers' rights.
Simple example is the infamous IR35 changes that brought no rights employment by the backdoor - if you work in-scope of the rules, you are in fact an employee for tax purposes only and they don't have any employment rights despite paying all relevant taxes and the left couldn't care less about that.
As one Labour member told me oh if someone makes 100k why do they need employment rights?
So there you go.
I wonder how the UK left feels about train drivers
They earn plenty more than the UK average and are very strongly unionised in jobs with high barriers to entry in an industry that can't simply close its doors or move elsewhere to save money.
(Detail: the train driver's union is ASLEF, not the more well known RMT.)
They earn plenty more than the UK average and are very strongly unionised in jobs with high barriers to entry in an industry that can't simply close its doors or move elsewhere to save money.
Pun intended? The main contention in the current rail strikes (apart from pay) is that the government and train operating companies would like drivers to open and close the train doors, instead of having a conductor do that role. Unions are vehemently opposed, allegedly on safety grounds.
The reason that drivers' wages are quite high is all down to the traiin operating companies. They ask drivers to work on rest days and Sundays (when some of the companies have ZERO rostered drivers) because it's cheaper than training new drivers and increasing the headcount. A further reason is the habit of poaching staff from other operators, which again tends to increased wages.
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