By Mike Toten Freelance Writer

An employee who mistakenly revealed email addresses of 850 employees by sending “carbon copy to” on a fundraising email has been reinstated. The Fair Work Commission (FWC) found that other employees who had made similar errors were not dismissed, and the manager who had made the decision to dismiss her had a conflict of interest.

 

Facts of case

The employer claimed that the email, sent to both other employees and contractors, breached its privacy and confidentiality policies by knowingly disregarding rules not to disclose employee information.

The employee claimed she had typed “cc to” instead of “blind copy”. The email was intended to raise funds for a co-worker suffering from cancer, and she claimed that time pressures contributed to her mistake. She added that she rarely used email and had not been trained in its use. It was not relevant to her actual job, a truck driver.

Some recipients had complained about their email addresses being disclosed and raised their fear of potential identity theft.

She had requested the email addresses and received them – the FWC distinguished between that and “accessing” them without authorisation.

She had not received authorisation to obtain the email address list, but claimed she only did so after a manager ignored two emails requesting permission to access. That manager had previously endorsed the fund-raising activity, but otherwise took no interest in it and left the employee to manage it on her own.

The employer’s decision also relied on other alleged disciplinary matters that were not included in her “show cause” letter, meaning that she could not respond to them.

There was evidence that other employees, including managers, had made similar mistakes with sending emails, and no action was taken against them. Those emails had contained sensitive and private information about

employees, whereas the contents of the email in this case were innocuous (relating to the sale of work shirts to raise funds).

There was no evidence that the employee had received training in the use of email, despite being required to sign her agreement to the employer’s policies, and her manager had ignored the chance to provide guidance by not replying to her initial requests. That manager had then made the decision to dismiss her, which the HR Manager had then signed off on.

 

Decision

The employee was reinstated, with the FWC finding that her dismissal was unfair for the following reasons:

  • Other employees who had committed similar breaches had not been dismissed.
  • The manager who dismissed her had a conflict of interest as he was involved in the dispute. He failed to provide her with guidance when she requested it.
  • The employer relied partly on previous disciplinary issues without revealing them to the employee.
  • The employer falsely claimed that she had been refused permission to send the email – in fact it had not responded to her.

 

What this means for employers

Breaches of employment policy must be handled consistently for all employees. For example, it will be unfair to dismiss some employees and take no (or lesser) action against others for similar breaches.

A decision whether to dismiss must be made by someone who is not directly involved in the facts of a dispute, otherwise a conflict of interest may arise. In this case, the decision should have been escalated to the HR Manager.

It is not sufficient to have employees sign their “agreement” to employment policies. You must ensure that the employee actually understands the policy and provide him/her with training if required.

Another feature of this case is that the FWC ordered reinstatement despite the employee having since obtained other work, albeit on lower pay and inferior conditions.

 

Read the judgment

Rebecca Callow v M People (QLD) Pty Ltd [2025] FWC 2031 (15 July 2025)