Atlassian says it had right to fire engineer for suggesting billionaire CEO was a ‘rich jerk’

Atlassian illegally fired an employee for criticising its CEO over workplace changes and how he talked to staff, US labour board prosecutors allege.

At a March 3 hearing in Austin, a National Labor Relations Board attorney said the fired software engineer, Denise Unterwurzacher, had been acting in the spirit of Atlassian’s own stated “Open Company, No Bullshit” philosophy when she repeatedly spoke her mind about workplace issues, including changes to employees’ titles.

Letting Atlassian fire her “would upend well-established principles” under US law, NLRB attorney Colton Puckett told an agency judge, according to a transcript obtained by Bloomberg via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Employees are allowed to collectively discuss and protest their working conditions, Puckett said, “and they’re allowed to do so in ways their bosses might not like.”

Atlassian has denied wrongdoing. A company spokesperson declined to comment further, saying the Australia-based firm does not discuss individual employment disputes.

US labour law protects the right of employees to talk about and take collective action over issues at work, whether or not they have a union. Unterwurzacher’s case could end up testing how President Donald Trump’s recently confirmed appointees to the NLRB interpret the breadth of that legal protection. The new members restored a quorum in January, allowing the board to decide cases again nearly a year after Trump ousted agency leaders he said he wasn’t confident would treat employers fairly.

Unterwurzacher was fired in June 2023, after a showdown over a controversial “re-levelling” plan that amounted to a demotion for many staff and cost others their jobs, according to the government. During an “Ask Me Anything” video call with employees that included chief executive officer Mike Cannon-Brookes (who was co-CEO at the time), the staff was told by Atlassian’s chief technology officer that only a small number of employees could lose their jobs in the re-levelling.

“Employees disagreed in the chat, which resulted in Cannon-Brookes angrily interjecting to tell off the people who were complaining,” Puckett said in an opening statement at the hearing. On the company’s internal “Outrage Notification” Slack channel (a play on the “outage notifications” staff receive about technology issues), employees including Unterwurzacher mocked and condemned the comments from Cannon-Brookes, the company’s billionaire co-founder, who had joined the meeting from the headquarters of a basketball team he co-owns, the Utah Jazz.

“What’s up Outragers, just dialling in from my NBA team’s headquarters to yell at the people whose careers I’ve just pummelled,” Unterwurzacher wrote. Atlassian fired her a few days later, saying she had “engaged in acrimonious communications and ad hominem attacks against teammates and colleagues.”

At this month’s hearing, Atlassian argued Unterwurzacher’s comments were not legally protected, and so it had the right to fire her over them. “While employees are encouraged to speak up about workplace issues, they must do so in a manner that remains professional and respectful, as the law does not protect conduct that is abusive or gratuitously insulting,” the company’s attorney, Troy Valdez, said.

“Just because it was a CEO doesn’t excuse the conduct,” Valdez told the NLRB judge considering the case. “It was an irrelevant personal attack and insult directed at a colleague, essentially calling him a ‘rich jerk.’”

“If you’re discussing wages, compensation, or working conditions, did you feel you needed to be able to engage in an ad hominem attack to be able to do that fully, openly, and freely?” Atlassian’s lawyer asked Unterwurzacher.

Unterwurzacher replied, “I think it’s difficult to point out the power imbalance in a way that is not potentially described by somebody as an ad hominem attack.”

The NLRB judge considering the case, Susannah Merritt, said at the hearing that the parties have held settlement talks. Absent a resolution, any ruling the judge reaches could be appealed to the NLRB’s members in Washington DC, and from there to federal court. The agency can order companies to reinstate fired employees with backpay, but lacks authority to require punitive damages or hold executives personally liable.

Atlassian, which makes office tools including Jira and Trello, announced last week that it’s laying off 1600 workers, or 10 per cent of its staff, in order to steer more spending into artificial intelligence and enterprise sales.

Bloomberg

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