Cannabis dealing ‘security risk’

Press, 6 March 1984, Page 6

Cannabis dealing ‘security risk’

The Arbitration Court has ruled that Databank Systems, Ltd, acted reasonably and with justification in dismissing an employee who was convicted of possessing cannabis and of possessing it for the purpose of supply. The employee, Arthur William Leonard Tobin, aged 26, had taken a personal grievance case to the Court in January, claiming that he was unjustifiably dismissed in August last year. The case was heard in Wellington by Chief Judge J. R. P. Horn and»Messrs D. Jacobs and T. R. Weir. The Court, in its reserved decision, said that the company had given as justification for the dismissal the fact that Mr Tobin had become an unacceptable security risk and that his dismissal followed company

policy. Databank Systems, Ltd, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the four New Zealand trading banks. It provides comprehensive electronic data processing facilities to those banks and to other clients. “The company considers it must take all reasonable steps to prevent any unauthorised disclosure of information or any possibility of manipulation of data externally or internally. Confidential information is Databank’s stock in trade,” said the Court. Staff involvement with drugs was a threat to the security of the system, the company considered, said the Court “The employer in the present case says that Mr Tobin’s position with the company is such that he could manipulate the func-

tions of the Databank for his personal gain and also that he could, by reason of his association with the supply of drugs, be possibly under pressure from other people to provide information from the databank system for gain,” said the Court

The company’s policy was that conviction for possession should not generally result in dismissal but that conviction for supply of drugs or the use of hard drugs should generally lead to dismissal.

The Court said that in his evidence Mr Tobin had said that he had been involved for profit.

The Court held that the employer’s attitude was reasonable “bearing in mind the confidential and sensitive nature of its operations.”