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Comment by maxehmookau | Hacker News Reader

Good. The richest man in the world doesn't get to be above the law on account of being rich.

If you own a company, that comes with responsibility and if you shirk those responsibilities the law will come for you; as it should.

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Consider that the commission is also pushing US companies to avoid Ireland.

That's an incredible leap.

The commission is pushing US companies to avoid breaking employment law in Ireland. Companies that believe the law is unfairly attacked against them or who were planning on ignoring the law might be deterred from opening up shop in Ireland, but how many companies does that describe?

Breaking the law isn't a meaningful part of the economic argument. X can hire employees in any country in the world. Ireland is proving itself to be more costly than a competing country and thereby pushing employment away.

Eh, this is bullshit. Ireland always had labor laws, and most companies operating there had little problems navigating through it.

Of course, those companies were not under the whims of a moronic buffoon.

Crass as your point is and it may be true, each time they fine companies it raises the cost of operation and changes the nature of the decision.

X was not fined.

The €550k was compensation for unlawful termination.

What you're describing is a political calculation that I doubt Irish courts have the discretion to make. The law was in place, and Twitter chose to either knowingly break it or act without assessing the legality of their actions.

Inconsistent application of corporate/employment law is a strong disincentive to business participation because it makes the law feel capricious (and because there are plenty of disputes between businesses where there's no obvious way for political actors to put their thumbs on the scale in a "pro-business" way).

I'm describing an economic calculation. The political decision is irrelevant and simply a cost of doing business. The higher the total cost of employees in a country without an offsetting benefit, the more likely companies will be to avoid the country.

Pushing US companies that don’t follow local laws to not operate there?

Something tells me they’d be okay with that.

If you can't fire employees who refuse to perform at the level required or show a commitment for that then it was very right to be fired.

The staff member had a choice, agree to an increased level of commitment or decline, he obviously declined.

If companies can't decide who stays on or not, then definitely they would be more hesitant to invest / movel locations to Ireland.

This will take time and certainly one of the things considered among a thousand others when choosing a location!

The staff member clearly did not have a fair choice. His terms of employment were unilaterally changed in a way deemed to be illegal in Ireland. "Be more hardcore" is not a sensible description of a working environment to anyone but the most hardened of Musk apologists.

The law stood up for the employee in this case, as it should.

Ireland's tax regime is notoriously kind to tech companies, so I doubt they'll go anywhere.

>who refuse to perform at the level required or show a commitment for

I know it's paywalled, but could you at least take the time to find an archieve and read the article if you're going to make such a claim? It's usually the top comment.

>Rooney was one of thousands of Twitter employees sent an email by Musk requiring them to pledge to stay with the company, working long hours at “high intensity” during its transformation, or to accept a buyout. Staff were given a day to click “yes” to agree to unspecified employment terms.

Doesn't sound like performance issues. Sounds like "I have altered the deal, pray I do not alter it further"

>If companies can't decide who stays on or not, then definitely they would be more hesitant to invest / movel locations to Ireland.

Good. These are employees, not contractors/consultants. You want a short term expert solution, hire a consultant with their much higher hourly rates. You don't want culpability for employees but need labor (short or long term, but not forever), hire a contractor.

Companies seem to forget what "careers are", and why once upon a time they helped to develop them.

it's called the European Union for a reason. You screw around too much with one country and you are basically locking youself out of half the western population or more. Maybe some trillionaires will try this hand, but I don't think you become a trillionaire only by appealing to Americans.

The agency which made the ruling is called the Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission. While I assume they do not make decisions for the European Union, I could be wrong.

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