Virgin have just been found to have unfairly dismissed four former employees after they were sacked for gross misconduct on the grounds that they allegedly distributed links to a video clip claiming to show a Taliban fighter having sex with a donkey. One of the sacked employees said: "It's a night vision clip so all you can make out is green with black blobs, it's really very tame… When we were dismissed I showed the video to my mother and she wasn't offended by it."
Offensive or not, the four pointed out that more senior Virgin staff allegedly regularly sent pornography to the airline’s staff (and were able to produce a substantial amount of evidence to suggest that this was accepted practice). They also claimed that they had not been made aware of Virgin's email and IT usage policy. The tribunal found in their favour although they decided that the employees had contributed to their dismissal. But the judge also reportedly rebuked the airline for relying on the company's internet policy in the case of one of the employees who was dismissed for sending an email from home, on a day off, using a personal email account.
