The perils of posting comments about fellow workers on social media networks are highlighted in Damian O'Keefe v Williams Muir's Pty Limited T/A Troy Williams The Good Guys where the applicant (O) allowed his frustration at not being paid his correct commission entitlements over a period of months to boil over into the following Facebook posting:
The Respondent's concern was that:
- an employee had called a female employee a "c..t" and had done so publicly on his Facebook page where other employees could see it; and
- the reference to "c..ts are going down tomorrow" constituted a threat to the Respondent's Operations Manager (T) who was responsible for sorting out the commission payments.
O was contacted the same day to be told that his comments had been taken as an intention to resign. Upon his return to work, he denied that he had resigned, or intended to, but admitted that the comments had been directed at T. Following an exchange between O and the Respondent, he was asked to leave the premises and later received a letter of dismissal.
Deputy President Swan noted that, although T herself did not have access to O's Facebook page, O's colleagues did and it would be difficult to imagine that O was unaware of the consequences of his actions. The Employee Handbook stated that:
Even without such a warning, it was said that "common sense would dictate that one could not write and therefore publish insulting and threatening comments about another employee in (this) manner."
The fact that the comments were made away from home made no difference as the permissions allowed them to be read by selected work colleagues and they soon spread to T. The separation between home and work was now less pronounced than it once was and O's conduct was sufficiently serious to amount to a repudiatory breach. His application was therefore dismissed.
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