Here’s another reminder, as if you needed one, on why you and your workforce should always remember that there is no privacy in the workplace: stories in Seattle’s two newspapers this past weekend about a group of Port of Seattle employees fired over explicit content they were e-mailing in the office.

“A year after a scandal engulfed the Port of Seattle’s Police Department over smutty, derogatory e-mails, 15 more employees in a different section of the port have been caught exchanging similar e-mails, some for nearly a year,” according to a story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “The employees were part of a survey crew in the aviation division. Spokeswoman Terri-Ann Betancourt said eight employees, including the crew’s top two managers, were fired … seven others were suspended without pay. Four contract workers were found to be involved in the e-mails and were dismissed from the crew’s project, which had been the repaving of a runway.”

I won’t go into the details of what was sent in the e-mails (the Post-Intelligencer story does a pretty good job of that, if you’re interested), but suffice it to say that “the e-mails, which contained pornographic, racist, sexist and demeaning material, started as early as June 2007, soon after [Seattle Port Chief Executive Tay] Yoshitani informed employees of his zero-tolerance policy against harassment and improper computer use.” The chief had to remind his workforce to not send such e-mails after the Post-Intelligencer reported last year “that nearly a third of the Port of Seattle’s sworn police force had been exchanging racist, sexist and sexually graphic e-mails for years, until a few were finally reprimanded.”

What kind of person, working in a professional position in today’s modern workforce, doesn’t understand that sending stuff like this over an employer’s computer is wrong and grounds for immediate termination? The Port of Seattle situation is even more unbelievable, given that this very same problem erupted a year ago in a sister agency (the port’s police department) and steps were taken then to raise everyone’s consciousness about it.

This story also shows you that sometimes, the most interesting details are the ones you have to hunt a bit for. The Seattle Times version of this same story reported that “The Port of Seattle has fired eight employees and four consultants [emphasis added] for inappropriate computer use, including viewing sexually explicit photos, sexually oriented jokes and jokes about race, gender and national origin.”

Let me get this straight: Four consultants engaged in this behavior—consultants who were brought in by the Port of Seattle, probably at a premium rate of pay, to advise on best practices? I could go off on a rant about consultants here— I believe that too many are paid too much to tell you and your organization what you probably already know. In this case, I’ll just say that the situation in Seattle really speaks to how consultants are just given too much free rein when they get hired, and that this is probably even more the case at a public agency than it is in the private sector.

Port of Seattle Commission President John Creighton told The Seattle Times that he did not see the offensive e-mails and other content, but had them described to him. He said some of it was as “vile and disgusting” as the police e-mails that were so troublesome the year before.

“When setting a zero-tolerance policy, it is appropriate to hold people absolutely accountable,” Creighton told The Seattle Times. “We’re a public agency, and it is appropriate the public holds us to a higher standard.”

I know Creighton is right, but this makes me wonder: If a public agency should be held to a higher standard, why is Seattle dealing with this same problem so soon after the last incident was made public? My guess is probably the same as yours—it’s because the people managing the public agency aren’t being held as publicly accountable as they should be.