Pizza workers strike over Internet porn
I cannot imagine how much fun it is to work at a pizza-making plant.
Indeed, the mere fact that there exist plants to make pizza seems entirely unedifying to me.
So I cannot help but feel a tinge of sympathy for three workers who were allegedly caught casting a furtive eye upon some material of a pornographic nature while pumping out pizza for the man.
According to the Belfast Telegraph, staff at the Green Isle Foods pizza-making plant in Naas, Ireland, will be calling for more strikers to protest the firing of their three frustrated colleagues.
The Irish Congress of Trades Unions has granted approval for the plant to be picketed by naked women. Well, perhaps I am imagining the "naked women" part.
The Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union, representing the three men, is disputing the very facts surrounding their dismissal.
"One of our members received an e-mail from outside the plant and was essentially dismissed for receiving an e-mail," TEEU general secretary designate, Eamon Devoy told the Telegraph.
I am guessing that the e-mail did not contain pictures of rolling Irish hills. Or perhaps it did.
Although a spokesman for the company told the Leinster Leader that this was "a cut and dried case of dismissal for people who seriously breached IT policy by accessing and e-mailing adult material of a serious nature."
Yet I am touched to hear that locals have come out in support of the workers. The Leader reports that they have delivered doughnuts to the picketing workers.
Oh, and pizza.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
Pornography has no objective definition ("I'll know it when I see it" was as close as a real US Supreme Court Justice ever got to defining it legally).
All that said, this is a case of common sense. If I surfed pr0n at work in front of my (very female) sysadmin colleague, I would deserve to be fired. She doesn't deserve to be subjected to something she finds offensive - especially something that has frig-all to do with work. It's bad enough when I go through the proxy log audits and have to confirm suspicious links (I warn her beforehand out of courtesy).
Porn does, on an objective scale (mostly through QED) have a place in civilized society. Thing is, that place is not at work (unless you work for that particular industry).
I'm sure the "civilized" societies of Iran, Afghanistan, Kuwait, North Korea, and so on agree wholeheartedly.
I find it interesting that the more patriarchal, oppressive, and tyrannical a society is, the more that society condemns porn; in Afghanistan, the workers would be executed rather than fired. And then the people who sent the emails and the people who received them would be executed too.
Pornography seems to be a marker that goes hand in hand with a free society; there is a direct correlation between systemic oppression of women in barbaric places like Iran and harsh suppression of porn. Why is that, do you suppose?
It pizza image must be huge since it takes a long time to load.
I support the company as well- have some sense of morals and work ethic when you enter the doors people...
and if you get soo excited at the mere mention of porn- then you are also sick and wrong...
Porn is only an issue in this story if the the company had a specific policy regarding porn, provided a specific definition of what porn is in relation to their specific work environment, and whether or not the employee actually introduced the alleged "porn" item into the workplace or it was introduced unsolicited by a third party.
I find it amusing and quite typical that people are making judgement on this employee before they get the facts.
Oh wait ...
Well Chris, you do realize that all processed foods are made this way, don't you?
But I will admit, frozen pizzas would be much more appetizing if they were made by penguins in Antarctica. Hold the anchovies, please.
When most of my employees want to make a personal call they ask me and I have yet to say no because life cannot be compartmentalized exclusively and sometimes work impinges on the private and sometimes the private on the work.
However there do exist employees who take advantage of situations for their own gain or because of laziness. Indulging in any pornographic material while at work always crosses this line. It is not exactly important stuff like organizing to pick up the kids or other necessary activities. It is porn, and accessing porn while being paid by the company is just goofing off and requires disciplinary measures depending on the incident and history of the employee that ranges from instruction not to do that again, to firing.
- by eadeguzman September 27, 2009 8:38 AM PDT
- Oh, here you go again, Chris the Porn master in CNet...
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- by pentest September 27, 2009 1:37 PM PDT
- Well, they need to be experts in something don't they. They fail in technology everyday, so why not something simpler?
- Like this
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (67 Comments)I don't understand why you would focus so heavily on PORN. None of the other news sites do. Enough already! Does CNET want to be the expert in porn?