Insurance firm suspends employees for email

Employees of insurance firm Royal Sun Alliance are the latest victims of workplace email crackdowns as the company confirms Monday "a number" of employees have been suspended for allegedly misusing the Internet.

Reports suggest around 40 employees have been suspended after a smutty Bart Simpson image was accidentally emailed to a company director. A spokesman for Royal Sun Alliance claims the firm has a "very strict policy" on Internet and email use. A spokesman confirmed that a number of employees are believed to be in breach of their employment contracts but would offer no further details.

"They have been suspended while we investigate," he says. The spokesman was not prepared to comment on whether the firm would be permanently banning email.

Robin Bynoe, partner at London law firm Charles Russell, believes employers are making mountains out of molehills. "These cases do seem terribly fashionable at the moment -- unless employers just want to sack people before Christmas," he says. He believes employers are over-reacting because they are "frightened" of the Internet. "Downloading porn at work is stupid but the mildly pornographic jokes that flood in day in day out I can't see the harm in," he says.

It is the latest case in a long line of alleged email and Internet abuse.

Last week law firm Norton Rose found itself at the centre of some very unwanted publicity after an employee's personal email describing a sex act got distributed around the globe. The British Chamber of Commerce believes it may not be long before employers are forced to ban personal email altogether.

Bynoe believes personal email will live to breathe another day, pointing out that the precedent-setting Halford case -- in which a woman police officer successfully sued employers for tapping personal phone conversations -- means employers can't ban it. "Article eight of the Human Rights Act points out that every employee is entitled to personal telephone calls at work and it follows that they are also entitled to personal email," he says.

The search for Claire Swires, the girl at the centre of the Norton Rose sex mail row, ended Sunday as the weekend papers revealed pictures of her. She had become something of a cause celebre following her response to a joke about oral sex.

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