Elon Musk’s Dublin-based Twitter International UC has lodged an appeal against a ruling that it must pay out an Irish record unfair dismissal award of €550,131 to a former executive.
In the ruling last month at State watch-dog, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), Adjudicator, Michael MacNamee found that Twitter International UC - now known as 'X' - unfairly dismissed the company’s former Director Source to Pay, Gary Rooney in December 2022 after he failed to respond to Elon Musk’s ‘Fork in the Road’ email.
On Tuesday, solicitor for Mr Rooney, Barry Kenny of Kenny Sullivan Solicitors in Bray, confirmed that an appeal of the WRC ruling and award has been lodged by Twitter International UC with the Labour Court.
Asked to comment, Mr Kenny said: “I am confident that the WRC ruling will be upheld and in fact I would expect the Labour Court may decide to increase the amount awarded by the Adjudicator in the WRC.”
Mr Kenny said: “I would expect a hearing date before Christmas."
At the WRC, Twitter International UC fully contested Mr Rooney’s claim over five days of hearing contending that he had resigned voluntarily.
In his findings, Mr MacNamee found that Mr Rooney was dismissed because he did not click “yes” to Elon Musk’s ‘Fork in the Road’ email and for that reason alone.
On November 16th 2022, Mr Rooney and the Twitter workforce received an email from Mr Musk who said: “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing a grade.[....]
Mr Musk said: “If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below.”
After Mr Rooney opted not to click ‘yes’ on the link, three days later on November 19th, 2022, Mr Rooney received a further company email which stated that it is “to acknowledge your decision to resign and accept the voluntary separation offer”.
The email stated that Mr Rooney’s last working day was Thursday, November 17th and that his access to Twitter systems was deactivated the same day.
On November 26th 2022, Mr Rooney - with the company since 2013 - emailed his employer to outline “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, Mr Rooney told the WRC that prior to the change of ownership he loved his job.
On receiving Mr Musk’s ‘Fork in the Road’ email, Mr Rooney said his first reaction was disbelief, and he was initially afraid even to open it for fear that it was spam or malware.
On November 17th 2022, Mr Rooney messaged a colleague on the company’s internal SLACK messaging system saying “I need to step away for my own sake. I'm deeply troubled by what's going on here these days”.
In a message to another colleague later that day, Mr Rooney said: “Twitter 2.0 wont be for you and me”.
Twitter International UC's Senior Director of Human Resources, Ms Lauren Wegman told the hearing that Mr Musk’s 'Fork in the Road' email was sent to 270 employees in Ireland which was the balance of workers not affected by redundancies and 235 clicked “yes”.
In relation to the remaining 35 employees, Ms Wegman said “We accepted their resignations”.
Ms Wegman said the mood amongst workers at the time was mixed with some excited about “Twitter 2.0” while others were more negative and wanted out of the company.
In his findings in the 73-page decision, Mr MacNamee stated that "the SLACK messages have no relevance to the question as to what brought about the termination of the Complainant’s employment".
The record €550,131 award was made up of Mr Rooney’s remuneration losses of €350,131 from January 2023 to May 2024 and estimated future remuneration losses of €200,000.
The remuneration losses were based on Mr Rooney’s Twitter remuneration of €323,560 made up of €151,225 in pay and €172,335 in deferred cash consideration.
Mr Rooney secured a new role with an employer in the banking sector in September 2023 on a total remuneration of €129,897.
