The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has considered the fairness of a dismissal for uploading obscene material onto a work cloud storage account, when the employee argued that password sharing was "widespread" in his workplace.
In this Romanian case, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) accepted that the employee's right to a private life had been affected when his employer accessed his Yahoo messages. However, the ECHR went on to hold that the employer's actions were justified in the circumstances and not in breach of art. 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has held that procedural defects in an employee's dismissal for allegedly bullying a colleague who "unfriended" her on Facebook could be cured during the appeal stage.
In the first Scottish appellate decision on Facebook misconduct, the EAT has held that ordinary principles of law apply. The EAT held that the employment tribunal had erred in law and substituted its own views for those of the employer.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal considered the misuse of Twitter by an employee for the first time. The decision highlights the importance of having a robust policy in place relating to the use of social media at work.
The employment tribunal held that the claimant was unfairly dismissed for comments on Facebook about his workplace, although his compensation was reduced by 50%.
The employment tribunal held that the claimant was fairly dismissed after making threats on Facebook to a colleague who had reported him to the employer for his frequent references to his workplace as "Dante's Inferno".
A Northern Ireland industrial tribunal has provided a useful example for employers of circumstances in which it can be fair to dismiss an employee for offensive comments made about a work colleague on Facebook.
An increasing number of tribunal cases involve employees making work-related comments on Facebook. This case shows that derogatory comments will by no means always justify dismissal.