GitHub apologizes to affected employee
No time right now?
Last week, GitHub fired an employee who warned his Washington colleagues about Nazis on a Slack channel on the day of the Capitol Riots. Now the responsible HR person has resigned.
Concerned about his colleagues, the employee wrote in an internal company chat on the day of the Capitol riots: “Stay where you are, friends. Nazis are in the area. ”Two days later, he was fired for“ unacceptable behavior ”. As a result, over 200 of the 1,700 GitHub employees asked for clarification of the circumstances of his termination in an open letter. As a creative form of protest, some had moved to repeatedly use the word Nazi in Slack conversations around the Capitol Riots.
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Official apology
In one official statement on the GitHub blog the company publicly apologized to the fired employee, his dismissal was a mistake, they wanted to apologize honestly to the employee. The responsible HR manager took full responsibility for this and consequently resigned from her post.
In a statement to the workforce, Nat-Friedman, CEO of the Microsoft subsidiary, wrote on January 10th that GitHub’s employees are of course allowed to express their concerns and fears on topics such as white supremacy, anti-Semitism or other forms of discrimination . Of course, you expect all employees to behave respectfully and professionally at all times and to follow company-internal rules on issues such as discrimination and harassment at all times.
“We don’t magically fire people”
In a tweet last week, GitHubs Senior Director of Global HR Services commented on the case. “HR is tough. We don’t just magically fire people if this decision is not supported by management. ”The tweet has since been deleted, Techcrunch however, posted a screenshot. Also other Twitter users expressed doubts the arbitrary decision to fire the employee.
Not interested in recovery
The fired employee told Techcrunch that a colleague took offense at his Slack message. Two days later he received the notice. He was honestly concerned about the safety of his Washington colleagues and Jewish family members who lived in Washington. He was not interested in resuming his employment with the Microsoft subsidiary, but would be interested in other forms of reconciliation.
