[fhd2]

The problem is that you can still get fooled or bullied into accepting a bad deal. I suggest everyone working in the EU to learn their rights and to consult a lawyer when something doesn't feel right, doesn't cost much here, initial consultations are often even free. Don't sign something put in front of you before you had a chance to understand your position. The person who wants you to sign it had ample time to do that, you didn't. Same goes for accepting things that seem unfair via email or verbally, that can weaken your position already.

I've been on both sides of the fence (mostly in Germany). As an employer, my approach was usually to be nice to employees I wanted to get rid of and to offer them a good severance package proactively. If you push an employee and give them ammunition to sue (and you fail to fool/bully them) it's gonna get a lot more expensive. Not to mention distracting/emotional. Just keep in mind that if you hire an FTE, you'll have to mentally put money aside to exit them at some point in the future. Hiring freelancers is more expensive, but doesn't carry these problems. I tend to mix FTEs and freelancers, partly to distribute the risks and costs.

When talking to people in bad situations with their employer, I'm always surprised how little they know and how easily they're willing to take the short end of the stick. There's a deal between you and the company that specifies what you'll do for them and what you'll get in return, with legal context surrounding it. I think it's also good to be nice and willing to compromise in that situation, but employees generally don't seem to be aware of what a powerful position they're actually in, and don't feel they "deserve" that, or don't want to upset anyone. It's business at the end of the day, contracts. Don't be a bad business person, it's not like CEOs will respect or like you more if you don't put up a fight. Typically the opposite.

The lack of these protections is one thing that, IMHO, warrants the comparatively high US salaries in tech. More risk, more reward - business 101 stuff.

[nolok]

Not sure about germany or other countries but in France any contractual change that specifically make the employee position worse without any clear return is essentially voided in "prud'hommes" (the workers/companies justice court) unless they were warned in advance of a negociation meet and brought their representative with them (any company above 10 must have one, and more and more as the company grow).

Also, any major change need to be in counter signed writing, it cannot be a one way thing, not even a "we both agreed" even if it's true.

As an employer myself it sometimes lead to seemingly absurd situation where you need heavy procedures for a simple change, but the end result is that no worker is screwed this way in a way that would stick in court (it still does happen, mostly in areas where people don't go to court after, of course).

A specific kind of deal is the "the company is going south, we make a collective agreement like eg no firing and no dividends and workers agreed to reduced hours or salary for X months" things like this, and in Twitter case it could be what they should have used, but again these have clear procedures and steps to be considered legal and not abuse by the employer, and as you can imagine a middle of the night email with no representation does not fit at all.

I know Musk is a know it all that believe he is so smart and better that he doesn't need to listen to the competent persons around, but I wished I could be a fly on the wall in the company's lawyer room that day, just for the absurdity of it (I imagine it was sort of "we can pretend it's ok, or we can tell him and be fired too").

[fhd2]

Oh we don't appear to have that level of protections in Germany. If you accept, for example, a demotion (that one could argue is still in line with the job title and description in your contract) via email, it's difficult to contest later. If you do want to contest it, you have to be quick and do it in writing. For something like reducing salary or other benefits, or changing your job title, those need to be counter signed. Problem is, quite often promotions are (deliberately) not offered with contract amendments, so when you're demoted later, the company can argue you've never legally been promoted in the first place. Sounds like a drag, but it's incredibly useful to describe your role and responsibilities in the employment contract, and to insist on an update once promoted.

As for Musk's lawyers, I'd also love to know how exactly that played out, I can imagine all kinds of scenarios, some hilarious. The most likely to me seems that he wasn't exactly involved in this particular case, or any of these cases. People handle it based on what they think he'd want to do, then pass on the bad news if their plots fail somehow. I'm assuming this might be net positive for him in the end: He got away with the forced, incredibly quick culture change and workforce culling and was able to move forward with his strategy immediately. Delaying problems seems to have worked out for him quite a bit in the past.

[helsinkiandrew]

> The problem is that you can still get fooled or bullied into accepting a bad deal. I suggest everyone working in the EU to learn their rights and to consult a lawyer when something doesn't feel right,

If you've been forced to make a choice with an incredibly short timescale, many tribunals/courts (in Europe anyway) will put aside your choice if it later turns out to be detrimental. It's a bit like forcing someone to sign a contract at gunpoint.

[pavlov]

> “I suggest everyone working in the EU to learn their rights and to consult a lawyer when something doesn't feel right, doesn't cost much here, initial consultations are often even free”

In many European countries unions provide free legal support.

Join the union even if things are good for you now, and you don’t have to go hunting for legal help if one day you feel like your employer isn’t being fair.

[nolok]

In France it's mandatory in a company to have a "company union", after 10 employee it's one representative (employee who has part of his paid time dedicated to employees support functions, and it grows to more and more the more employees there is.

Whether those representative act on their own, or join a national union or syndicate, is their own decision, and they're elected every 4 years.

Any meeting or importance between an employee and his employer, he can request one of the representative be present to assist him (and in some type of meeting, it is pretty much mandatory to avoid employer pressuring against).

Etc etc ...

Our system is far from perfect, but at least having SOMEONE in the company to turn to seem to make sense to me.

[Lev1a]

> In France it's mandatory in a company to have a "company union", after 10 employee it's one representative (employee who has part of his paid time dedicated to employees support functions, and it grows to more and more the more employees there is.

In Germany, that's called "Betriebsrat" (something like "company council") with pretty much the same purpose.

And then there's the "Gewerkschaft", which are unions not for one company but for entire sectors of the economy who - through their numbers of members - are able to do collective bargaining for the employees of their fields of various companies. E.g. "IG Metall" being the industrial union of metalworkers, which considering Germanys large manufacturing background is the largest union in the country.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Metall

[com]

I think that the standard translation into UK English of “Betriebsrat” is “Works Council” [1].

I’ve never been highly convinced by these organs, since they seem to be colonised by folks who want to become Very Difficult to Fire, and who ultimately fold to any poorly thought-through management decision that impacts the lives of employees.

I’ve come to that both as an individual contributor and as a senior manager, but YMMV.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council

[justincormack]

In the UK ACAS provide free support as well.

[GJim]

ACAS are terrific....

...a government body providing impartial advice for employers and employees to improve industrial relations. I can't recommend them enough.

https://www.acas.org.uk/

[throwaway744678]

You don't even need to join to get access to the support.