There is a big difference between unilaterally announcing that you won't be coming to work and having your request refused and getting fired for leaving anyway.
It looks like the employer interpreted the message as a type of ultimatum. In the face of such an ultimatum, they basically have no choice but to treat it as a resignation.
The ultimatum is a very dangerous negotiating tactic, and generally harmful to long-term relationships. As an example, I recommend against posing an ultimatum to a spouse or partner.
Edit: speaking of "ultimatums," what do you call a strike? Is it only an "ultimatum" (thus unacceptable) when one person does it, but not when a large group does it?
If they had said that they have concerns about safety, and requested an urgent (possibly remote) discussion, the employer would have more options. By telling the employer that they were leaving immediately, and not coming back until they felt something had changed, they force an immediate decision of either treating it as a resignation, or accepting and condoning unilateral actions by employees.
Strikes are definitely ultimatums, though they generally have clearer objectives, and are usually preceded by a series of discussions. Strikes are not conducive to good relationships.
Read this again, and comprehend that the HR unilaterally and knowingly subjected them to risk of contacting the virus.
Subsequent self-quarantine at home benefits the company as it reduces the chances of spread. It was the right thing to do, and there's not much to negotiate here given the initial screw-up.
I am not making a judgement as to who is at fault for the situation. I am only stating that the decisive move was the grandparent's e-mail, which left the employer only one rational option (that I know of).
What does Samsung stand to gain from this? They lost an employee (which will cost them in recruiting when they open up again) and gained bad reputation (and a disgruntled former employee).
This is power play that hurts everyone.
You do know that frequently the only reason these "discussions" are able to be had is because of the threat of a strike? What if the GP had these "discussions" and was told to go back to their desk and STFU? Then what?
Strikes are actually the result of employers abusing employees, which is what creates the bad relationships. You sound as though you believe the other way around, that strikes create bad relationships.
Do you see an alternative way the corporation could have handled this that would at least given the impression they valued the lives of their labor force?
Imagine someone gets up at their desk, and yells out: "I am leaving, and not coming back until you agree to my terms". That is the (assumed) situation here, and leaves management with almost no options.
I read "sent an email that I was leaving and would not be returning for at least two weeks and pending further info about any spread" as such an ultimatum. It is a final statement, the rejection of which will result in a breakdown of relations.
No.
The issue here is that Samsung notified an employee of a coronavirus case on their floor by an email they could only read at work.
The HR willingly and knowingly subjected the employee to the risk of contracting coronavirus, taking away their ability to make an informed decision of whether or not to come to work that day given the risk.
This is criminal behavior. Don't make excuses for them.
I'm not even sure if you pushed this hard enough as a wrongful termination that it wouldn't stick.
That said it may be difficult to prove. Employee should demand answers to their concerns about work place safety, and the employer should answer them properly. This doesn't look like it was done. The employer knee-jerkingly firing the employee the next business day after being informed the employee was not abandoning their post for no reason also doesn't look good. They knew why he was not there, and I wonder if they made any attempt to reassure or reiterate their COVID-19 safety plan, and what the expectations of staff are. If the employee was not satisfied with the answer or application of the answer, then they should file a complaint with local employment board and OSHA, and possibly speak with a lawyer if they feel they are under threat of retaliation for reporting genuine work place safety concerns.
"By the way, your office is infected, and we didn't want to tell you this before you arrived here. Sorry not sorry."
This is criminal, and should not be excused.
Or to put it another way: just because you can fire someone by rolling dice doesn't mean you can fire someone for being black.
That's part of why you'd often see lots of HR bureaucracy regarding firing process, documenting infractions, performance improvement plans, etc also in states where technically you can be fired without a reason.
They're trying to avoid paying out unemployment by saying he failed to show up for a shift but even sans-COVID firing after one absence is abnormal.
Before any of that, I'd already decided back in early March—when it became clear that things were more serious than people had been taking everything—that I'd stick around until we either temporarily shut down or when the reported cases start getting too close for comfort.
A few weeks ago I sat down in the morning to find another company-wide email sent out at 9:00PM the night before (don't know why they hadn't also forwarded a copy of this one to my personal inbox that I could access from home, as with the ones before). In this case, symptoms were reported 4 days before, and now with confirmation having tested positive. This time it was on my floor, not far from where I sit in our open office. I sent an email that I was leaving and would not be returning for at least two weeks and pending further info about any spread. That was a Friday. I got fired over email (although not in those terms) at the end of the day the following Monday:
Although you did not resign failure to report to your scheduled shift(s) has been taken as a voluntary resignation. We have gone ahead and ended your assignment for you. Please do not report back to the SAS site as your assingment here is done.
This was all within the last two weeks. At the time, our group had been doing a piss poor job of observing both company and local rules about distancing. It had been less than a week since people around me had finally gotten moved to different workstations. It wasn't an availability problem, because (a) half the office was already a ghost town due to select folks ordered to work from home, and (b) the rest of the company had been been working spread out for something like a month already—but not our group.
At the beginning of April, we were supposed to get a scheduled payout for earned PTO, but we received an email that due to COVID they were actually going to delay the payout. I had to jump through a lot of hoops alternately taking on extra days that I wasn't ordinarily scheduled and taking off other days to burn the PTO to give the effect of getting the payout for the hours I'd accrued.