Insubordination? What order did they violate when voicing criticism of the CEO?
I do think Musk was within his legal rights to fire these people, but that does not mean it was the right thing to do or that he should be immune from criticism. Especially after he's made such a big fuss about free speech being so important.
Insubordination is refusal to obey a direct order, and is grounds for instant dismissal (at least where I live - the UK). What direct order did these guys disobey?
I think in the USA insubordination is neither here nor there, because US employers can dismiss people just because they don't like them.
They were likely told to stop participating in discussions around the letter and then they didn’t. The verge article mentioned there were huge internal discussion threads.
I am surprised that rejection of an order could be grounds for instant dismissal in the UK. In Germany that would involve a lengthy process of legal letters to an employee. Something like 3 strikes. Also you can't just order anything from an employee. It's not the military, right?
The work culture in Germany is also quite different I imagine. My impression is Germans take their work very seriously. There is simply no room for the crybaby BS that has become all too commonplace in the American workplace where people have deluded themselves into thinking they are there for activism first and work second.
This indeed - the professionalism displayed by my German colleagues is incomparable to that of my erstwhile American colleagues. Much higher maturity levels even for people of the same age group. Not surprising that worker councils are also treated seriously by higher management.
The direct order has to be something important that is part of your job.
Less-serious insubordination should be dealt with by means of formal warnings, and processes to help the employee improve. But if, for example, I'm ordered to attend a customer meeting at 10:00am, and I refuse on the grounds that I'm planning to stay in bed until 11:00am, I can be fired summmarily. The employer would be well-advised to document everything scrupulously.
Ultimately an employer can fire anyone they want; HR processes and procedures can be rigged. In a legal dispute between an employer and a worker, the employer has the upper hand. If a worker wins an employment dispute, they might keep their job; but they now have a hostile employer.
And all the people getting cancelled said and did x bad thing, but Musk's sycophants and defenders, who tend to be free speech absolutists, act like people should be immune from the consequences of their actions.
There is no equivalency between getting fired because you insulted your boss and getting fired because 20000 hyperonline strangers didn't like your opinion about politics stated outside of work.
I don't think this is a good comparison. First of all, many (most?) of the people who got canceled didn't do anything offensive or objectionable. Off the top of my head.:
* The guy who got fired for cracking his knuckles in a way that looked vaguely like an "OK sign" which is offensive to some extreme left-wing people
* The data scientist who got fired for citing research on the efficacy of nonviolent protest
* The journalist who was pressured to leave his workplace for interviewing a black man whose views didn't match a certain narrative about what black people believe
* The professor who was suspended for saying a Chinese word that sounds vaguely like an English slur
Moreover, cancellation is "pressuring someone's employer to fire them". This is different than an employer taking offense to an employee's speech and firing them as a consequence.
If Musk has said something like "employers shouldn't fire employees on the basis of their speech" (and he may have done, I really don't know), then he's probably being hypocritical, but not on the basis of cancel culture.
You have merely cherry-picked some examples of cancel culture where people were fired for merely trivial things.
> If Musk has said something like "employers shouldn't fire employees on the basis of their speech" (and he may have done, I really don't know), then he's probably being hypocritical, but not on the basis of cancel culture.
My comment was necessarily about Musk himself, but also about his defenders. Thus, it doesn't matter much whether Musk himself is a hypocrite based on any of his own statements, but rather whether his supporters (for lack of a better term) are hypocrites based on positions they have previously staked out.
> You have merely cherry-picked some examples of cancel culture where people were fired for merely trivial things.
I was explicitly noting that many cases of cancellation are unjust. Giving examples is appropriate.
> rather whether his supporters (for lack of a better term) are hypocrites based on positions they have previously staked out.
I’m sure some are. Any person with a large following will have many people who are hypocrites. A huge swath of the general population is hypocritical, so I would expect some hypocrites among Musk’s followers.
I don’t know how you could credibly argue that his supporters in general are hypocritical in a way which is independent from whether or not he is.
No it isn't. Shareholders have power over the board, not directly over the officers. It's a shareholder's duty to oversee the board's actions and it's the board's duty to oversee the CEO.
Since this is a closely held company there are different rules as well.
I do think Musk was within his legal rights to fire these people, but that does not mean it was the right thing to do or that he should be immune from criticism. Especially after he's made such a big fuss about free speech being so important.