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E-mailing porn ‘may not mean the sack’
Print Edition
Sending pornographic images using your work e-mail should not automatically be considered a sackable offence, an Australian workplace tribunal has ruled.
The Fair Work Commission announced its decision after considering a case in which three postal workers were fired after they used work e-mail addresses to send or distribute sexually explicit material.
The commission said that sacking the workers — all long-standing employees of Australia Post — was too harsh a punishment.
It said there was “an emerging trend in the decided cases toward regarding the accessing, sending or receiving and storing pornography by an employee as a form of serious misconduct that invariably merits termination. Such a proposition is inconsistent with basic principle.”
It added: “Accessing, sending or receiving and storing pornography is not a separate species of misconduct to which special rules apply.”
The case was picked up when Australia Post used filtering technology to flag e-mails with attachments which could be pornographic.
The commission said the filtering system had picked up pornographic e-mails sent by many employees over an extended period.
It said that “weighing the seriousness of the misconduct against the factors mitigating against dismissal,” it concluded the misconduct did not warrant dismissal.
But it stressed: “We are not endorsing or authorizing employees to use their employer’s IT system to e-mail pornography or other unacceptable material.”
“We endorse the right of employers to have policies against the use of their IT systems to access, store or e-mail pornography or other unacceptable material.”
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