Ontario's minister of natural resources says he's "not happy" the government will be forced to rehire six workers after it was discovered they were swapping pornographic e-mail at work.

"I'm not happy with it and I'm not happy with the idea that we're going to have to take them back," David Ramsay told the Canadian Press.

The employees were fired three years ago. Two of them are already back on the job. A third worker returns on Tuesday. All of them were employees of the province's Ministry of Natural Resources.

On June 18, arbitrator Ken Petryshen quietly issued a decision that concludes the Ontario government did not have just cause to dismiss the half-dozen employees.

The six were the worst offenders among a group of 90 MNR workers identified as having "a large volume" of inappropriate material in their ministry e-mail accounts.

Petryshen said the content of the e-mails spanned all manner of "degrading, dehumanizing and racial content," from Britney Spears to bestiality and snuff.

Ramsay said he doesn't know "what grounds we've been ordered to rehire these employees and what other remedial action we are supposed to take."

"We're going to have to look at that and see if there's any opening for any further action," he said.

He added that he's still not sure whether the arbitrator will award the workers back pay for the three years they were off. That would amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost wages.

Ramsay said he hopes the sanctions recommended by the arbitrator would be "stiff."

The minister said 83 workers were disciplined in the case in 2001. In those cases, he said the punishments ranged from letters of reprimand to firings.

"To know that this number of employees were spending a part of their working day -- sponsored by the taxpayers of Ontario -- transferring this type of smut and filth that poisons the workplace and threatens and intimidates people is just wrong," Ramsay said.

Citing a spokesperson at the MNR, CTV's Toronto affiliate, CFTO News, reports that the government has no choice but to rehire the men.

However, once Petryshen releases his written decision, the department will consider an appeal.

The offensive material was discovered in the course of a government investigation launched in 2001, when the ministry's harassment and discrimination officer received a complaint concerning images of nude women on several conservation officers' computers.

When the volume of inappropriate images was uncovered, the government hired an external consultant to head the probe.

In the course of his investigation, Petryshen found that the six men who were fired had violated workplace harassment guidelines -- as well as warnings that appeared on their computers each time they logged on -- by viewing, sending or storing the images.

In his January, 2003 report, the vice-chair of Ontario's grievance settlement board wrote that the ministry fostered a workplace culture in which such material was commonplace.

Citing the discovery of offensive e-mail in the accounts of managers, human resources staff and even a workplace-harassment adviser, government lawyers had argued the firings were necessary.

If the worst offenders didn't lose their jobs, they said, other employees would be sent a message there's nothing wrong with viewing and distributing pornography at work.

The lawyer that represented the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and the six fired workers said the union always maintained the workers should be punished.

But Don Eady said the union believes firing the workers would be too harsh, since all of them were first-time offenders.

"Obviously we were pleased that we were able to get the six employees reinstated," Eady said."It wasn't six guys off on their own doing this. It was a broader problem."

He added that not all of the e-mails were sexually explicit -- some of them were rude cartoons or tasteless jokes according to Eady.

Since the incident happened, the government has implemented strict rules to remind employees they should only be using their computers for government business.

Ramsay says he's not aware of any recent cases in the ministry where the behaviour had been repeated.