Last week, we reported on Revolut forcing some staff to leave their jobs without severance – citing underperformance or making them quit on their own accord for just a slice of severance. Since Revolut has not really addressed the issue publicly so far, let’s take a look at how has the CEO addressed it in messages he sent to his employees.
But first, let’s repeat some major points of the whole affair. According to an investigation from WIRED, Revolut pressured some employees to pick between two documents – one terminating employment for “underperformance”, the other cited a “mutual agreement” including a small severance that counted as the employee leaving of their own accord.
Read also: Revolut has been accused of pushing 50 of its staff to quit or to get fired
Revolut has admitted some layoffs: “As in many companies, COVID-19 necessitated cost-cutting across our business and, in the last resort, we made 62 redundancies globally, representing less than 3% of our staff,” a Revolut spokesperson told Cointelegraph on June 5.
But around 50 employees who decided to leave on their own accord to receive at least something are not included in the 62 layoffs officially announced by Revolut. Also, those “mutual agreements” appear to be against the law in countries where Revolut has its biggest offices.
Here are the leaked messages that have been shared on the Twitter account of journalist Emiliano Mellino, the author of the original WIRED article.
It is clear that companies have to make tough decisions during a crisis. But as Nikolay points out: “That doesn’t allow us to cut corners so I want to assure you that we will review the points made very carefully to see if there are things we can do better.”
Revolut’s Krakow-based customer support agent Elena claims, that she was offered the exact either/or kind of a deal. Either being fired for underperformance (according to her, just two weeks earlier, her manager had assured her that her job was safe and that she was performing well) or picking the mutual agreement while not getting the full severance.
Polish employment lawyer Grzegorz Ilnicki says the termination agreement given to Elena was not only missing key details required by law but that forcing her to choose between that document and a “mutual agreement” could be illegal.
Similar cases could have been also found in Revolut’s Porto offices in Portugal and even in the London office. According to comments under last week’s article, analogous actions have also taken place in the N26 challenger bank offices.
Hopefully, Revolut is going to review those cases and will abide by the labor law in the mentioned countries.
