The Human Rights Review Tribunal has ordered NZCU Baywide to pay $168,000 after the credit union distributed an image posted by a former worker on Facebook, Radio New Zealand reports.
Photo: The Wireless/Alexander Robertson
The image of a cake iced with swear words about the company on Karen Hammond’s private Facebook page was distributed to employment agencies.
A lawyer specialising in internet privacy, Rick Shera, said the Tribunal had made an example of the credit union. The amount awarded showed how much of an issue privacy had become in the age of social media.
The finance workers' union described the case as one of the worst examples of employee bullying it had seen and Maxine Gay of the First Union said snooping on private online content was like peering through someone's back window, and the damages awarded were a warning to employers to stay out of workers' personal lives.
“The level of surveillance, the level of micro-management, that employers want to exhibit ... they've got to have some caution when they start to invade people's lives outside work.”
Hammond said the case had taken a huge toll on her life and left her humiliated, but she did not regret putting the image of the cake on Facebook.
She said she lost employment opportunities, the case caused major grief for her family, and the financial impact meant her partner had to leave the region to find work.
NZCU Baywide said in a statement that it accepted the ruling and was genuinely sorry.
