Clearing out your Facebook account is normal practice for many of us, but a workplace tribunal has ruled that unfriending could be construed as bullying.
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New precedents may have been set for harassment in the office, with a workplace tribunal reportedly ruling a woman’s act of removing a colleague from her friends list was part of an act of bullying.
The complainant alleges that Mrs. Bird’s actions have caused here depression and anxiety and is now receiving medication and treatment.
TEMPTED to delete that annoying co-worker from Facebook?
Ms Roberts said when she complained to the agency principal James Bird that she was not getting a fair representation of her properties displayed in the front window of the agency, Mrs Bird called a meeting and accused her of being a “naughty little school girl running to the teacher”.
Roberts later discovered that Bird had unfriended her on Facebook, when she logged in to see the if her colleague had posted about the incident.
The Commission’s deputy president Nicole Wells believes that by pressing the unfriend button on Facebook Mrs. Bird showed she did not like Ms. Roberts.
When The Fair Work Commission ruled that nine of Ms Roberts” claims were upheld, one of them was the unfriending, which the tribunal said showed “a lack of emotional maturity’.
“The “schoolgirl” comment…is evidence of an inappropriate dealing with Ms Roberts which was provocative and disobliging”.
The Commission agreed with Ms Roberts that the behaviour was unreasonable.
The parties will hold discussions to decide what sort of anti-bullying order should be made.
“What the Fair Work Commission did find is that a pattern of unreasonable behaviour, hostile behaviour, belittling behaviour over about a two-year period, which featured a range of different behaviours including berating, excluding and so on, constituted a workplace bullying”, Blackburn explained.
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Legal experts said the case did not mean that unfriending a colleague on Facebook would automatically constitute bullying.
