The sacking of Centrelink staff over pornographic e-mails had raised workplace privacy issues, the ACTU said today.
Centrelink has sacked or demoted 24 employees at its Ballarat office in Victoria for transmitting sexually explicit pictures and jokes via the Internet.
ACTU senior industrial officer Linda Rubinstein predicted laws will soon be updated to restrict interception of e-mail communication as they did for telephone conversations.
"This case and other cases, it does raise the whole issue of the extent to which private use of e-mail and the Internet at work is acceptable, the extent to which it does remain private or it can be monitored by the employer," Rubinstein told ABC Radio.
"I think that it (laws) will (rapidly change) in the same way we have laws about monitoring of telephones and we have laws at least in NSW about video surveillance.
"The Victorian Law Reform Commission is doing an extensive inquiry into workplace privacy which will look at these issues and hopefully those findings later in the year will influence the development of law not just in Victoria but throughout Australia."
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