Man fired for obscene Web use — or was it gender bias?
August 31, 2009 by Sam NarisiPosted in: Gender discrimination, HR Tech, Special Report - Tech, Terminations
When IT finds someone’s been browsing offensive Web sites on a work computer, you’d normally fire the employee. But what happens when it’s a computer several employees share?
That’s what happened in this recent case:
All employees in one department of a hospital shared a computer. Employees each had their own username and password, and company policy required them to log in under their own name and log out when they were finished.
But in practice, the first employee to use the computer would normally stay logged in all day, with all employees working under that name.
During one shift, an employee noticed pornographic sites in the computer’s Web browsing history. She complained to HR, who brought the matter to IT for an investigation.
It turned out that the only male employee in the department was logged in to the computer at the time the porn sites were visited. He denied going to the sites, citing the common practice of all employees sharing one login ID.
A further investigation showed the man was the only department employee scheduled to work on a day when some some of the sites were browsed. He was fired.
Still, he said he didn’t do it — and he sued the hospital for gender discrimination, claiming they assumed he viewed the pornography because he was the only male employee.
The company asked a judge to toss the case, arguing it conducted a thorough investigation before the employee was fired.
The court agreed. First, since the man was logged in to the computer at the time, it was reasonable to start the investigation with him. And the list of possible perpetrators was narrowed down even further by comparing employees’ schedules with the times the sites were accessed, giving the company good cause to fire the employee.
Lesson: When multiple employees share one computer, it’s smart to create a policy requiring individuals to log in and out. But to track activity, the company still has to enforce the policy. If the hospital had done that in this case, it may have avoided the lawsuit altogether.
Cite: Farr v. St. Francis Hospital and Health Centers
Tags: Discrimination, pornography, Web browsing
September 1st, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Interesting case. Since the employer was able to narrow down the times the sites were accessed against the times people were at work, it sounds like a kosher decision. Otherwise, I would have agreed with him. It’s not like some women don’t enjoy porn. Short of videotaping everyone all day long, this is probably the best they could do.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Like the article said, the IT department should have been tracking the logins and thus should have known long before the incidents occurred that the personnel were not following company policy. At that point they could have easily remedied the problem, and been far more sure that whomever accessed porn was in fact the person logged into the computer at that time. Likewise had they tracked the logins, the lawsuit could not have happened in the first place because the man would have been documented to be the only person on the computer at that time.
These days, the company is considered at fault unless it can show the paper/computer trail as to exactly what has transpired in a given situation. And it is not enough to implement a policy, instead that policy has to be enforced regardless of how it may adversely affect the company for the short term time frame.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
No more fapping at work for that guy!
September 1st, 2009 at 2:53 pm
We had a similar case were there was some sites had been accessed on the computer and first person logged in for the day. There was only one male in the department he was accused of doing it and they were in the process of firing him because none of the woman would be looking at it. I’m the IT guy and I did a deeper investigation I found malware on the computer and this software was accessing those sites. HR did not believe me when I brought it to there attention until I went to the VP of HR computer and found the same sites. I was then accused of putting on her computer because us male stick together. At this point she was say I was going to be fired when the President of the company came and started to thank me on the good job I did on finding the infected server. What had happen is one of are clients web server had been infected that we access all day. So always look before leaping.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:23 pm
What gets me about this case is that there is no reference to the actual policy and no one was offended by the porn being in their face..a co-worker saw some porn sites listed in the browser histroy….what a pollanna snitch..how many other web sites of a personal nature did other employees visit, recipie photograph, travel, personal email, social networking sites etc., etc, that no one complained about, that IT never noted….was the policy just no pornographic websites or was it no personal browsing at all? My bet is that there was plenty of personal browsing.
And I agree it sounds like it could have been anyone also working during that time period. As he denied it was him, I am sure all the women denied it was them. There easily could have been a curious female who didn’t want to browse porn at home. The clincher was that the “the man was the only department employee scheduled to work on a day when some some of the sites were browsed.” That pretty much proves he did SOME of the browsing, but maybe not all. But he is the one who got caught. Too bad for him, but not gender bias.