Revolut accused of holding back bonuses

Revolut faces a court case in Poland as workers accuse the bank of not paying bonuses that were due.

The new legal case is the second time this year that Revolut has been accused of forcing employees to “voluntarily” leave.

Revolut, which was valued at $5.5 billion  this year in a recent fundraising, broke even this year for the first time in its five-year history.

Revolut at one time allegedly made a commitment to pay bonuses to multilingual employees. Several former employees in Revolut’s Krakow, Poland office said the company promised these bonuses to them on a monthly basis.

All of these employees have been asked to leave the company. The ex-employees said that the company regularly failed to live up to its promises, and caused some of them to go on a “language strike,” which included refusing to translate documents such as tax records,. This reportedly caused problems for the Krakow office.

Revolut, in a statement, said these bonuses have been limited to certain language skills and particular employees — staff in dedicated teams who provide in-app customer support.

One worker said she complained about the lack of language bonuses in messages to London-based executives. Soon after, she claims that Revolut told her she had to choose, on short notice, between leaving the company by “mutual agreement” or being fired on disciplinary grounds.

It is this former worker who is taking Revolut to court. Her case had been set for a Krakow court hearing earlier this year, but the hearing was delayed due to restrictions for the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is not the first time the company has been accused of forcing employees to accept a ‘mutual agreement’ when they leave work. Earlier this year, Wired magazine reported that customer support workers were pressured into accepting ‘mutual agreements’ at the height of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

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