Brescia Court: dismissal of persons who make improper use of a company computer is lawful

With its judgement no. 782 dated 13 June 2016, Brescia Court held the dismissal of an employee who was caught using the company computer during office hours to access social networks, games, music and other activities unrelated to her work to be legitimate. The Court considered the behaviour of the employee to be undoubtedly serious given that the same had carried out about 6000 accesses in 18 months (of which 4500 to Facebook) on an average of three hours of work and that these accesses lasted even tens of minutes at a time. As regards the way the employer had discovered the facts in question, the Judge explained that the employer had limited itself to printing the history and type of access to the web from the PC of the employee, and that this did not imply any violation of privacy. The Judge also pointed out that in the case in question, there is no violation of the provisions of clause 4 of the Workers’ Statute because the activities carried out were control activities relevant to behaviour and not to performance of the work. The decision in question, which reflects the technological evolution of our times, is thus in line with the early approach of case law on the use of social networks and their significance in the working context.