Employee Benefits poll: Half (50%) of respondents think that Morrisons should not be held partly liable for the data breach of its employees’ payroll information.
Last month the supermarket chain lost a challenge to a High Court ruling in December 2017 that found it vicariously liable for a data breach leading to payroll data of around 10,000 staff being posted online.
A straw poll of www.employeebenefits.co.uk readers, which received 66 responses, also found that 27% of respondents believe that the employer should be held partially responsible for employees’ data being shared.
The remaining 9% of respondents said they didn’t know where the responsibility lay for the data breach.
The Morrisons case results from Andrew Skelton, who was senior auditor at the organisation’s Bradford headquarters, posting workers’ names, addresses, bank account details and salaries online in 2014. He was jailed for eight years for the offence in 2015.
In the first data class action in the UK, 5,518 of the employees sought damages through the courts for the distress caused.
The employer has signalled its intention to appeal the latest decision in the Supreme Court.