- A 41-year-old client manager was fired for viewing adult content at work, but said it wasn't him.
- According to the district court, the Shanghai man blamed the virus on his computer and colleagues.
- He sued his employer for wrongful termination, seeking $43,000 in damages.
A Shanghai financial services employee who was fired for viewing pornographic websites at work has sued his former employer for infecting his computer with a virus.
The 41-year-old customer relations manager, identified by the city's High Court as Yang, claims his contract was wrongfully terminated, authorities said in a Thursday report. They sought compensation for damages.
Chinese courts typically do not release the full names of prosecutors and defendants in low-profile civil cases.
According to the Shanghai High Court, Yang worked for his employer for five years before being fired in August 2022, earning a monthly salary of about $2,360.
The average monthly income in urban Shanghai that year was about $1,700, according to the latest government statistics.
Yang's employer said she accessed “Little Movies” on her work computer, violating a contract that prohibits employees from viewing pornography at work. The term is a euphemism for explicit videos in China.
But Yang provided company records showing co-workers often downloaded movies and shows to their work computers during off-duty hours. The court said this could have infected the computer with Trojan horse malware.
He also showed the court a photo of his office, which was an open space with no speakers, and said such a working environment was not suitable for consuming pornographic content, the report said. So the “little movie” must have been seen by someone else, Yang said.
Yang acknowledged membership in adult sites due to “personal remorse”
According to a Shanghai court, Mr. Yang's anonymous employer obtained Internet records showing him viewing adult sites while sending files to co-workers and actively working. filed and counterattacked, suggesting Ms. Yang was using a computer at the time.
The court was also shown records from a messaging chat group in which Yang wrote to her superiors as a “personal reflection” in which she registered as a member of an adult content website and said she was struggling with self-control. .
According to the court, Yang said in his reflection that he had to repeatedly return to the website to click on links to earn points and maintain his membership.
The Xuhui court ruled that Mr. Yang had clearly breached the contract and set aside the $43,000 claim.
However, the now-fired customer manager was ordered to pay $1,090 for five days of paid vacation he did not take in 2021, which Yang included in his lawsuit, according to City Court.
This is not the first time Mr. Yang has sued his employer over similar terminations. The court said he tried to seek $47,000 in damages in November 2022, but he was only awarded $1,500 for the remaining PTO he didn't take that year.
In the United States, the increase in remote work has led to a significant increase in the number of employees using company devices to access adult websites. The number of workers who admitted to such behavior increased six times in 2020 compared to 2019, according to a study by software company Netscope.
Cybersecurity company Kaspersky reported that 51% of 6,000 employees surveyed in 2020 said they had watched adult content on devices they used for work.
