Israeli tech firm ordered to pay €35,000 to Irish employee sacked for calling Israel a ‘terrorist state’

An Israeli tech company has been ordered to pay €35,000 in compensation to a former Irish employee who was unfairly dismissed after calling Israel a “terrorist state” on social media.

Wix Online Platforms has admitted that it unfairly terminated Customer Service Manager Courtney Carey on October 23, 2023, for serious misconduct following online comments she made about her concerns about the situation in Palestine.

The Israeli multinational, which employs around 500 people in its Dublin office, acknowledged that the way it dismissed Ms Carey was “procedurally unfair”.

The company, headquartered in Tel Aviv, provides a platform for creating websites.

“Blacklisted”

Ms Carey, 27, of Clondalkin, Dublin, told an Employment Relations Commission hearing in June that she felt she was being “blacklisted” from working in the tech sector because of the controversy surrounding her dismissal from Wix, where she had worked for four-and-a-half years.

In posts and comments on LinkedIn, Ms. Carey had described Israel as a “terrorist state” and criticized Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombing of Gaza.

Wix COO and President Nir Zohar said last year that the company decided to part ways with Ms. Carey after being bombarded with messages from Israeli employees who complained about Ms. Carey through screenshots of her message.

The controversy prompted Tánaiste and Foreign Minister Micheál Martin to say Ms Carey’s dismissal was “unacceptable” because employees “should have the right to express their individual views”.

Ms Carey said the very public nature of her dismissal and subsequent comments made by a senior Wix executive had a very negative impact on her efforts to mitigate her losses and on her future career prospects.

She said she then applied for 60 jobs, which Wix’s legal representatives said amounted to 2 to 2.5 jobs per week.

They also suggested that the complainant had received political support at the time of her dismissal and that her reputation had not been damaged given the many positive comments she had received on social media.

However, Ms Carey said she was unable to pay her €1,800 monthly rent for a studio after losing her job at Wix and had to move in with a relative.

WRC arbitration manager Marie Flynn said the only issue between the parties was the appropriate level of compensation given Wix had accepted Ms Carey’s dismissal was unfair.

Ms Flynn stressed that it was not within the WRC’s jurisdiction to award compensation on grounds other than financial loss.

The WRC calculated that Ms Carey suffered a loss of income of €20,000 during the six months she was out of work after being given four weeks’ notice of redundancy.

However, Ms Flynn found that Ms Carey had not made meaningful efforts to mitigate her loss since her dismissal by Wix.

In setting the appropriate level of compensation at €35,000, Ms Flynn said the number of jobs Ms Carey had applied for was not sufficient, even if that information had been provided, given that she had been out of work for six months.

According to the law, the maximum compensation that could have been awarded by the WRC in the Wix case was €80,000, the equivalent of two years’ salary.

After the WRC hearing last month, Ms Carey said she did not regret her initial comment about the situation in Gaza, despite being subjected to what she called derogatory and defamatory posts telling “complete lies” about her online.

“I think I’ve been very lenient. What’s happened to the Palestinians since then and what’s happening at the hands of the Israeli government has only gotten worse and worse. I’m glad I said what I said,” Carey said.

She added: “It was true then and it’s even truer today. I think the evidence is overwhelming when you look at what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.”