KEY POINTS:
Wellington company Arthur D Riley & Co Ltd has been ordered to pay $9000 to a woman the company fired after she forwarded an email, from her father, containing pictures of naked people.
The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) ruled Jessica Wood was unjustifiably dismissed, despite her employer having twice previously warned her about similar behaviour.
Here is the latest selection of Your Views:
Paul
Well I have access to only three websites at work, wises.co.nz, whitepages.co.nz and nzherald.co.nz. Personally I believe we should have more access, but obviously the business fears abuse. My response: we're all grown ups aren't we?
Boomshanka
Email attachments are the only reason I come into work.
Former employee
Don't judge this until you know the full story...... Go Jess, you had the guts to do what others before you didn't, and should have done.
Alan Wilkinson
Some years ago I drafted guidelines for our employees that said that they were not allowed to use computer facilities in ways that adversely affected the company's operations, reputation or any other person. Simply, we want our company to be a fun, innovative, efficient and productive place to work. To that end, common-sense is essential although completely out of fashion in today's over-regulated legalistic bureaucratic paradise. We have never had any significant problem with abuse of our facilities.
Karl Rohde
Employment law is all in the employee's favour. No wonder we have one of the lowest levels of productivity in the OECD.
Antoninus-7
Oooh... 'naked people'! Just to throw a cat amongst the lemmings, though', this is not an 'employer vs employee' issue, but rather an 'employer vs female employee' issue. If a male employee had been 'guitly' of the same 'crimes' (sigh...), never in a million years would he have been awarded damages, but more likely he would be tarred and feathered by the media, branded as a 'pervert' and left unemployable.
Crazy political correctness
We are in the crazy world. This is just speechless result led by this country's hopeless politicians and hopeless justice system. It's not just only for this case, but also so many cases around us. New Zealand is looking after all those criminals and politicians, rich and powerful people rather than the ordinary innocent poor people. That is why all criminals, rich and powerful people around world started to come to New Zealand looking for crime heaven. Viva New Zealand!
Your Boss
I'm your boss, and you're going to be fired for spending all day looking at nzherald.co.nz! Don't worry I have the cheque book ready.
Pat Tasker
This is another example of the country's very weak employment laws that should give some protection to the employer. The company owns the email system and the data it receives or transmits. This person, having been warned twice about inappropriate behaviour, continued and was rightly sacked. She should be paying the company compensation for the lost productivity time. Personal emails should not be allowed at work.
Andrew
Between two and five years ago, I was given three formal warnings for "inappropriate email usage" which resulted in me leaving a major New Zealand Bank. It was absolutely absurd, given the fact that everyone from senior management down did exactly the same thing on a daily basis, that none of the emails were obscene, pornographic or bullying, and that not once was a complaint made by the recipients of any of the emails in questions. It was undoubtedly part of the company's culture and I regret not having taken legal action at the time.
Annette
Yes there should be rules within local authorities in regard to fathers sending their daughters inappropriate emails and encouraging them to be sent on. Weird.
Erich in the States
She got far more than she deserved. In the face of a defined policy and repeated warnings, she repeatedly wasted time the company was presumably paying her for on non-work issues. Even ignoring the fact that the images could be construed as offensive, she compounded her own time-wasting by wasting the time of her co-workers by forwarding such twaddle, apparently to other company email accounts. If she wanted to do such things and not get fired, she should have gone looking for a more relaxed workplace where there was no formal policy against such behaviour. What she did is like going repeatedly to a restaurant that requires formal evening dress in stubbies and then suing if they finally tried to keep you out.
Adrien
I think it's appalling that the ERA took that view. They completely ignore that:
a) The woman was being paid to work, not paid to make personal phone calls, read and re-distribute personal emails, and do personal surfing. Her use of company time and resources for her own purposes amounts to theft.
b) The company warned her on several occasions but obviously still her behaviour did not improve. The company has a right to rely on the employee. Continued breaches of trust by the employee by ignoring reasonable directives has been proven in the appeal courts as sufficient grounds for dismissal.
The ERA decisions have been overturned on appeal in the past where the ERA has been found (many times) to grossly err in favour of employees. Looks like just another reason to get rid of the ERA altogether. This makes them look like a complete pack of retards.
Don
In the US, with progressive discipline this woman wouldn't stand a chance, and denying she signed documents holding any water is mind numbing. The defence using the fact that other recipients of her emails hadn't been disciplined, well is just lame. It's the sender/forwarder that is the offender not the recipient, unless they then forward it on. What are they supposed to do, put their co-worker's emails into the junk filter? No doubt the employers in NZ will have to spell out all that is objectionable. I feel bead for the next employer that picked her up. But the reality is, what you do on a company computer or network is "owned" by your employer, and they can deploy all of the filtering and blocking apparatus to prevent such content transmission. I'm a kiwi that worked for a large Fortune 500 firm in the US. It was a Christian lead organisation (out of Houston, TX), and they filtered and monitored any and all communications. The words "hell" and any terms using God's name in vain and all the expletives we have come to use for frustrating situations and bitching or any derogatory mention of management (no one dared push porn around) was routinely returned with the offending files or language underlined and wouldn't allow any transmission of such messages until edited. Unfortunately our clients whom had used similar language in their inbound communications were also bounced out and returned for editing. Needless to say they ended up using stronger language towards management on the phone. Clearly a NZ employer should fire based upon performance until they get their acts together on such cyberspace violation language. Looks like NZ is getting litigious like the US. Too bad.
Derek
A ridiculous and irresponsible decision. The consumer is the end recipient of the cost, the taxpayer is penalised funding an irresponsible organisation, the company is unfairly taxed with cost and time because of the ineptness of the employee who should have taken the warnings and emailed in her own time and on her own account.
Ron
She didn't win. she lost.
Marguerite
Workplace internet is for work only. Private internet use should be done outside the workplace. Using workplace internet for private matters is an abuse of recourses, including time. This person should have been sacked! In effect, she stole from her employer.
Ramkumar
What a girl! What a dad! What a country!
Pete C
Sorry, but what gave this lady the right to "expect" a $12,000 payout when she has clearly done something inappropriate and ignored previous warnings? It seems there is obvious bias in favour of the employee. I wonder if the folk at the ERA are practically accountable to anyone? All I can say to the ERA is before using your "authority" again, get in touch with the real world and normal standards of decency!
Dennis
Go for it girl. Luv ta meet you one day.
Paul G (London)
This is a crazy. This lady knew the rules, she broke them and now she seeks a payout. It's typical of the way NZ is heading if something goes wrong, everyone puts their hand out and expects something for nothing! Sometimes even when you when win you lose. She may have $9k in the back pocket but her name is in the public domain as a work place trouble maker. As an employer, I wouldn't touch her with a 10 foot barge pole!
Alison
If someone wants to send emails like this, then they can pay for their own email account. This case as a precedence makes a mockery of all security statements that employees sign and agree to at the beginning of a contract. It also makes nonsense of written warnings to employees. What about the time she has been stealing from her employer on personal emails as well? The lawyer must be good at their job. What is their name? Just for future reference.
Sam
Unbelievable! This shows how hard it is for employers to manage unruly employees! Her dismissal was justified! I wonder if the ruling would have been different if it was a male forwarding semi-nude pictures of females!
Silvea
I think the decision to compensate this ex-employee is ludicrous! She clearly did not deserve this payout as I believe the company she worked for were well within their rights to sack her as she was clearly breaching email protocol and obviously worktime was getting in the way of her personal life. I hope the company appeals this ridiculous verdict.
Scott
This is just the result of the loony left being in power too long. She can't remember signing three separate documents and suggests they're fakes? She should've been fired for being useless a long time ago. Here a poor business tries to do the right thing but a waste of space gets awarded money after wasting even more time by dragging this through the ERC. Crazy. This is up there with the "poor" painter who was upset and needed financial compensation after being fired for writing Nazi signs on a house he was painting and stealing company petrol for his private vehicle. Companies can't even fire the most pathetic wastes of space any more. Good way to cripple small businesses Labour.