Policies On Sexual Harassment

Q: Have been reading couple of articles about spam which contain sexual material, and how it is recommended that corporations revise their email and policy on sexual harassment. Has there ever been a case where an employee has sued his or her employer for getting sexual spam and/or the employer not taking necessary steps in stopping those spam?

A: In New Zealand the Occupational Health and Safety ("OSH") legislation puts a very strong duty on the employer to provide a safe workplace. Safety in this respect includes, but is not limited to, freedom from sexual or other harrassment. It is generally understood that allowing pornographic images to be present in the workplace, whether in hardcopy or electronic form, is not consistent with OSH

requirements but there have been no cases that I know of related to images of this type. The nearest case I can think of is where an employee (a Police photographer whose job required taking pictures, for evidential purposes, of harrowing scenes such as vehicle crash sites / murder sites) suffered mental stress and successfully sued his employer under the OSH legislation. It is also an offence (in NZ) to store some classes of material in a computer system. People have certainly been convicted for possessing these, primarily kiddy-porn, but again I am not aware of any prosecurions of employers for this: this is another reason for having, and enforcing, usage policies though.