A former Twitter employee has been awarded nearly $1 million after he was unfairly dismissed for not responding to an email from CEO Elon Musk calling on workers to be “extremely hardcore”.

Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission earlier this week ordered X, formerly known as Twitter, to pay former senior employee Gary Rooney $907,000 (550,000 Euros) for unfair dismissal, the largest such payout in the country’s history, as reported by The Guardian.

The case relates to an email sent in late 2022 by Musk, who at the time had just completed a $US44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.

The email, which was sent to 270 then-Twitter employees in Ireland, outlined Musk’s vision for the company under his reign.

“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” Musk’s email to employees said.

“This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

The email also asked employees to confirm their commitment to the new version of Twitter by clicking “yes” within 24 hours.

Those who did not confirm this were understood to have resigned and offered three months’ severance pay.

Rooney, who was Twitter’s director of “source-to-pay”, did not respond to Musk’s email, and three days later received an email that acknowledged his “decision to resign” and confirmed acceptance of a voluntary separation offer.

This was contested by Rooney in an email a week later where he said that he had not “indicated to Twitter that I am resigning my position, nor have I seen any separation agreement, let alone accept one”.

Rooney took the case to Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission, arguing that he had been unfairly dismissed and that his lack of response to Musk’s email did not constitute him taking a voluntary redundancy.

‘Not okay’

At the five-day hearing for the case, Twitter senior director of human resources Lauren Wegman said that of the 270 Irish employees who were sent the email, 35 people did not click yes, and that this amounted to them resigning from the company.

But this was rejected by Commission adjudicator Michael MacNamee, who found that the 24-hour deadline included in the email by Musk was not “reasonable”, and that Rooney failing to respond in this set timeframe could not constitute him resigning from his role.

The commission ordered Twitter to pay Rooney $577,000 (350,131 Euros) for lost remuneration from January 2023 to May 2024 and $330,000 (200,000 Euros) for lost future earnings.

Rooney’s lawyer Barry Kenny welcomed the decision and its “clear and unambiguous finding that [his] client did not resign from his employment but was unfairly dismissed from his job”.

“It is not okay for Mr Musk, or indeed any large company, to treat employees in such a manner in this country.

“The record award reflects the seriousness and the gravity of the case,” Kenny said.

Soon after taking over Twitter, Musk moved to lay off about 4,000 employees from its worldwide workforce.

These job cuts included a near-80 per cent reduction in safety engineers at the company, and the cutting of nearly 80 per cent of its global public policy staff.

In July 2023, Twitter was officially rebranded as X, with Musk pursuing a dream to turn the platform into an “everything app”.