How is Elon Musk able to subvert U.K. employment law?

[RocOn]

It’s my understanding that to dismiss someone who has more than two years’ experience, there either has to be gross misconduct, or a redundancy consultation and process. How is he able to fire such employees on the spot today?

metro.co.uk/2022/11/04/twitter-layoffs-begin-as-staff-prepare-to-be-fired-over-email-17699044/

Twitter will pay the required amounts or will be taken to tribunal presumably.

Because it's a multinational corporation. He gave them three month's notice and effectively put them on gardening leave. I doubt British courts would care enough if claims were made.

This HR guy explains more:

twitter.com/Surfer_Binary/status/1588716467356598273
twitter.com/Surfer_Binary/status/1588717041640673280
twitter.com/Surfer_Binary/status/1588718828263215104

I just wish he'd start swinging the axe in the NHS and cut away all the bloat. One can only dream.

And if you are unhappy with the kind of stuff people are allowed to post on twitter, it is likely to get a whole lot worse.

Well, we will see won't we? At the moment the most vile verbal attacks are allowed to stand, they clearly push their own hard left political agenda and all that before we even scratch the surface of the horrendous porn and threats that are allowed to stand on there.

He's clearing the decks. It's common business practice. I can't think of any other way it's supposed to build back up. As I said interesting times.

He himself posted a conspiracy theory about the attack on Pelosi's husband.

And so what to this 🤷🏼‍♀️. People are allowed to talk/examine/question/look for evidence. There's a lot to talk about with this situation - eg the way democrats have tried to push the guy who did this as a staunch right winger - trying to mane political hay of their own out of a clearly, deeply, mentally ill person. Discussion can't always go one way, and Mr Pelosi sure does get into a lot of scrapes for an 82 year old man.

How could it get any worse that twitter deliberately allowing child sex abuse images to be left up? Or the death and rape threats towards women? Banning people who believe in biological sex but protecting paedophiles? Quite happy for Elon Musk to cut all of them out. Twitter, as it was, had to intentions of changing so good for Elon for buying them out. Hope he does tik tok next, one can dream.

If they were employees who'd been there over 2 years, he will have had to pay (at a minimum) statutory redundancy plus if their jobs ended immediately, he'd have to pay wages for their normal notice period too.

I could be wrong but I'd imagine in a very pressurised/competitive industry like social/tech, the staff turnover would be quite high. He may well have just axed all the people who'd been there under 2 years and if so, that's all totally legal.

I don't understand the references to redundancy though. The Twitter situation isn't actually redundancy though is it because the job does actually still exist he's just sacking people?

Employer can generally give notice to somebody after two years can't they? Indeed we can all take a new job and give notice to our employer after many many years of service - it is allowed. Yes there are rules and guidelines, but people can be let go.

@RocOn

doubg a P&O and breaking law and buying people off. Circumventing the process like this has to become illegal with directors going to jail for two years. No trial needed as the email could be the proof. Plus as it's an active act they can pay for prison time.

that would stop it over night

@RocOn

doing I meant

I suspect what he is planning to do is create a two-tier service, somewhat like Spotify. One tier will be free and packed with ads; the second will be a premium "blue tick" paid-for service with fewer adds and extra functionality.

My suspicion is that he will probably create a filter system whereby you can view all of the twitter-verse, or just the blue tick universe. Over time, the blue tick universe will be the only one anyone pays any attention to, which will push free users to upgrade in order to be heard and seen. And when they do upgrade, they will no longer be anonymous.

This will then start to drain twitter of the poison while retaining the concept of free speech. People can say things, but they cannot do so anonymously, so they then take on liability for what they say. Plus, through charging mechanisms, twitter will know exactly who is paying for the account so there is a trace-back in terms of liability.

This has a number of other benefits. It will destroy bot-farms because no-one will pay attention to non-blueticks and it will be very expensive to pay for hundreds of premium subscriptions for bots. It will also force "blue tickers" to value the service in a different way and take more care over what they write. And it will force people to behave in a more civilised manner.

I also suspect he may introduce region locations to twitter accounts. Gone will be the days when huge twitter pile-ons occur through bots and anonymous sock puppet accounts in different sovereign territories.

The real question is why has he bought the damn thing in the first place? He knows damn well the user stats are horrifically inflated. Twitter states the number of UK users is over 19 million, which is frankly ridiculous. That would mean nearly half of all adults between 18 and 65 in the UK have a twitter account.

No, there's a longer game being played here. Dorsey is his friend too (and he's been bothered about abuse and misinformation on the platform for some time). And Musk has a Saudi partner on board.

I am wondering whether the idea is to create a kind of Bloomberg service for the political, social and cultural realm. Then, you see, you have the ability to sell real-time delivery packages, somewhat like buying a Bloomberg terminal. Twitter's contracted nature makes it perfect for this kind of thing.

But for this, what you need is pure information. So the first thing you need to do is get rid of the dross and the shit and the jokers. That's where the blue tick scheme comes into play.

Dorsey probably realised this was what needed to happen, but he couldn't push it that way with the people who were in place at twitter. And that's why Musk has bought it. He's the Gordon Gekko figure who is willing to take the hit for cleaning it all out.

It's interesting. I shall watch it all closely.

Buy why?

I would far rather be paid off than go through redundancy consultation. I have seen people who have gone forward and asked for this when consultation was announced. I responded to a call for volunteers once to avoid consultation. They weren't thrilled, I don't think my post was on their list, but they gave me a year's money and reminded me they could legally re-employ me in 6 months and I could keep the year's money.

Torunette really interesting analysis.

I hate people saying‘it’s interesting’- it’s people’s lives being turned over by an email saying ‘today is your last day as a twitter employee’. Read up on it and it isn’t all management, it’s normal every day people who were probably told exactly what their jobs were so eg you find something, your manager calls it. He bought a business, realised it wasn’t what he thought, tried to back out and then jumps straight into firing people? I hope his empire falls

But most of us gave experienced it as normal everyday people
so that's often behind the interest

my first redundancy was handled really sensitively, and the lady who did it was blinking back tears. But she'd arrived on the job after her fourth redundancy and wasn't yet 30.

my own experience is that as soon as they say it, I want to run. So a pay off is as good as it gets.

i'm old so I remember pre TUPE days and how mergers etc would hit people. I really hope the Tories don't get rid of TUPE.

there are a million things that make me angry about workplace culture for sure.

It is interesting though. It's a huge shift in the way we conduct current social discourse. No one is entitled to a job for life. Everyone has challenges around providing for themselves. I'm a single parent. My children are disabled. Last week I was threatened with all my benefits being stopped because I am studying with the OU and because I didn't directly receive any grant or loan money for it, I had no idea I had to tell them. I'm trying to make myself more employable and yet through not making one phone call I could have lost most of my household income. I'm still having surges of anxiety over it. I'm not some Ritchie Rich sneering at The Little People.

He bought a business, realised it wasn’t what he thought, tried to back out and then jumps straight into firing people?

I don't think that happened. I think he was trying to get the price reduced.

It is redundancy because a) Twitter doesn’t make a profit so he’s trying to trim the fat and b) he’s said there’s 8 managers for every developer, so he clearly thinks there’s too many employees.

But yes he has definitely broken redundancy laws in the UK. If the UK employees are basically getting 3 months gardening leave though/PILON it’s probably not worth taking him to tribunal. The P&O case was even more egregious and in the end I think only one person went to tribunal.

I take PP’s point about TUPE although has he definitely bought it himself and not 76er the umbrella of a parent company?

*under (not “76er”)

He hasn’t made them redundant.

He gave them all three months notice (they stop. Wing employed in February) and put them on immediate gardening leave.

perfectly legal and very sensible

He can make UK employees redundant (with due process) .
Its a new decision with no time yet to set up redundancy process.

Employees with less than 2 yrs service will get statutory-required redundancy "advice" but won't qualify for any redundancy payout.

So because of what the well paid most senior staff / owners did, you are going to be happy that people lose their jobs? You do realise that the vast majority of those losing their jobs are quite ordinary working people who need their income - people just like you? That's like being delighted that the P&O ferry workers lost their jobs because you don't like Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem. Disgusting attitude to British workers being made redundant. Or anyone elses, for that matter. Let's hope you and your loved ones don't one day lose your jobs, eh? Because it'd be hard that nobody cared, wouldn't it?

I not on Twitter or anything else. But I know enough about Elon Musk to know how stupid it is to think he can't be worse. The man is possibly the only person who could make Donald Trump look sane.

He tweeted that everyone got 3 month’s severance pay this morning.

I not on Twitter or anything else. But I know enough about Elon Musk to know how stupid it is to think he can't be worse. The man is possibly the only person who could make Donald Trump look sane.

Like what? Genuine question.