Plus, we share the stories of another company who have been legally unable to fire workers who viewed sexual content at work
An Environmental Protection Agency employee on a salary of $120,000 a year has confessed to watching two to six hours of pornography at work every day since 2010. He remains in employment despite being discovered in the act months ago, with further investigations revealing more than 7,000 x-rated files on his government computer. The information was revealed as part of a wider investigation into HR practices at the agency, which is facing the scrutiny of Congress.
Other scandalous trip-ups at the agency include the senior official John Beale, who collected $900,000 in wages for which he did not work – they were paid to him over the course of a decade while he fraudulently claimed he was working on classified projects for the Central Intelligence Agency. Another manager also connived to allow an absent employee to be paid more than $500,000, going so far as to falsify excellent performance reviews for the employee.
When questioned in Congress, the Deputy EPA Administrator Bob Perciasepe could not answer questions as to why the porn-watching employee had not been sacked. But it isn’t the first time employers have been stuck with staff members who access inappropriate content.
And in Kansas, a jury sided with four employees terminated for sharing pornography on their work computers. The workers, between 46 and 59 years old, were awarded $917,035 between them after they claimed age discrimination was at play.
According to the former employees, the company had been aware that younger workers also participated in the questionable behavior, but had not disciplined them. The older workers claimed they were singled out because the company had plans to replace them with younger people – and the jury believed them.
