Elon Musk Sent an Intimidating Email to All Twitter Employees. X Will Now Pay $600,000 to a Worker That Didn’t Resign

When Elon Musk bought Twitter (now known as X) for $44 billion in 2022, Gary Rooney had worked at the company for almost ten years as the director of Source to Pay, a position derived from the purchasing department at Twitter’s Irish branch. Now, X will have to compensate Rooney with more than $606,000 (€550,131) for unfair dismissal.

Musk and a “dismissal by default.” Shortly after acquiring the company, Musk sent an email to the entire Twitter workforce demanding greater commitment. “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,” the owner of the social media platform wrote in the email.

Employees willing to accept Musk’s new conditions could simply click a button in the email: “If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below.” Those who didn’t respond positively to the email would receive a severance package of three months’ salary. Rooney didn’t press the button, but neither did he inform the company about his decision.

Twitter wanted to confirm it, but the employee didn’t. Three days after receiving Musk’s email (and not responding to it in any way), the company sent Rooney a second email to “acknowledge your decision to resign and accept the voluntary separation offer.” Twitter had assumed Rooney wanted to terminate his contract when he didn’t respond to the email. As such, his access permissions to Twitter’s systems would be revoked.

A week later, Rooney sent an email to Twitter’s human resources department to indicate 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.”

A tribunal determined that Rooney didn’t resign. The Irish Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) agreed with Rooney’s unfair dismissal claim because he didn’t explicitly state his intention to resign, despite not clicking the “yes” button as requested.

During the five-day hearing, Twitter/X unsuccessfully argued that Rooney had voluntarily resigned by not clicking “yes” in response to an email. Out of the 270 employees in Ireland who received the email, 235 clicked “yes.” Lauren Wegman, senior director of human resources at X, acknowledged that for the remaining 35 employees, “We accepted their resignations.”

According to The Guardian, WRC adjudicator Michael MacNamee stated in his findings that 24 hours wasn’t “reasonable notice.” As a result, X was ordered to pay compensation of more than $606,000. Of that amount, more than $385,000 corresponds to unpaid wages between January 2023 and May 2024, and around $220,000 is compensation for the potential wage loss Rooney could’ve experienced during that time.

Slack is private, but it belongs to the company. During the process, X used a series of private messages as evidence that the employee had accepted his resignation. On the day Musk sent the email, he messaged one of his colleagues on Slack, 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, he wrote: “Twitter 2.0 won’t be for you and me.”

Beyond the fact that the commission hearing the case didn’t see a clear intention by Rooney to resign in these messages, it underscores that corporate messaging communications aren’t private. Employers have the right to monitor and retain Slack messages to ensure company policies are followed and prevent workplace harassment. However, as seen in this case against X, the company hasn’t hesitated to use them as evidence in court.

Image | Daniel Oberhaus (via Flickr)

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