Xerox, the world's biggest copier maker, said Wednesday it has fired more than 20 employees so far this year for looking at pornographic Internet sites at work.
"Forty Xerox employees have been fired for inappropriate use of the Internet, and the majority was related to pornography," Xerox spokeswoman Christa Carone told Reuters in response to a question on media reports.
She estimated that "a little more than 20" of the dismissals were for looking at pornography.
The fired employees worked in various cities around the United States, she said.
Stamford, Connecticut-based Xerox also found that some employees used the Internet at work for "excessive gambling, other stuff that was obviously inappropriate, and occasions where people were profiting for their own personal gain," Carone said.
"This was a huge drain on productivity, where they were spending the majority of their work time on inappropriate sites," she said. "It wasn't just going to Amazon.com for five minutes to buy a book, or to check out a sports score. These were extreme cases of abuse."
Carone added that Xerox has more than 40,000 US employees who have access to the Internet, so that the number of those fired was relatively small.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.
