Unfair Dismissal Application Over Facebook Rant Dismissed

Fair Work Australia has upheld a ruling that allowed for an employer to sack a worker for expletive comments made against a co-worker on Facebook. The Tribunal found that Mr Damian O’Keefe’s Facebook account, despite being of a personal nature, was so intimately connected with his work, given that eleven co-workers had access to his page, that it constituted a serious misconduct.

Mr O’Keefe had posted a comment of a threatening nature on Facebook, the target of which was an operations manager responsible for processing the pay of employees, Ms Kelly Taylor. Mr O’Keefe argued that the comment was not meant to be seen by Ms Taylor but admitted that some co-workers could see what he had written. The Tribunal ruled that 'the fact that the comments were made on the applicant’s home computer, out of work hours, does not make a difference’ as ‘common sense would dictate’ that a worker could not publish such insulting and threatening comments about another employee.

Mr O’Keefe was found to have engaged in serious misconduct and thus his application for unfair dismissal was dismissed.

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