September 6th, 2010
Support for Workplace Bullying Law: 2010 WBI Survey
New research findings from the 2010 Workplace Bullying Institute national scientific survey regarding the level of support for the workplace bullying law, called the Healthy Workplace Bill.
The question asked: “Do you support or oppose enactment of workplace bullying laws that would protect all workers from what can be considered malicious, health-harming abusive conduct committed by bosses and co-workers?” This is the language of the HWB. Here are the results for the entire national sample as well as by political ideology and race.
| YES = all support | Strongly Support | Somewhat Support | Not Sure/ No Opinion | Somewhat Oppose | Strongly Oppose | |
| National sample | 64.2% | 37.5% | 26.7% | 12% | 10.8% | 13% |
| Liberals | 89.5 | 62 | 27.5 | 4.3 | 2.4 | 3.8 |
| Moderates | 77.8 | 48.2 | 29.6 | 10.5 | 7.5 | 4.2 |
| Conservatives | 47.1 | 20.5 | 26.6 | 13.6 | 16.9 | 22.5 |
| Democratic Party Affil. | 83.5 | 57.8 | 25.7 | 9.5 | 3.6 | 3.3 |
| No Poll Party Affil. | 60.1 | 49.3 | 10.8 | 34.9 | 3.5 | 1.5 |
| Independent Party Affil. | 55.2 | 29.5 | 25.7 | 10.4 | 13.2 | 21.2 |
| Republican Party Affil. | 50.2 | 20 | 30.2 | 14.1 | 17.5 | 18.2 |
| African-Americans | 73.2 | 54.8 | 18.4 | 12.9 | 5.1 | 8.8 |
| Hispanics | 65.9 | 40.9 | 25 | 5.7 | 11.2 | 17.2 |
| Asians | 63.8 | 37.5 | 26.3 | 19.7 | 5.1 | 11.4 |
| Whites | 63 | 34.2 | 28.8 | 12.4 | 11.8 | 12.8 |
For comparison, consider that the Sunday newspaper magazine, Parade, asked the same question in a July 18, 2010 article titled: “Workplace Bullying: Do We Need a Law?” The magazine’s online poll results found overwhelming support for a law — 92% yes.
According to a WBI Instant Poll posted on July 23, 2010, 96.8% of 252 online respondents stated their support for a workplace bullying law.
Readers will want to digest Suffolk Law Professor David Yamada’s thorough and thoughtful Labor Day 2010 analysis of the liberal, moderate and conservative features of the Healthy Workplace Bill. He is the bill’s author.
WBI Research Director, Gary Namie, PhD
© 2010, Workplace Bullying Institute
Survey 1: Zogby International was commissioned by the Workplace Bullying Institute to conduct an online survey of 4,210 adults from 8/4/10 to 8/11/10. A sampling of Zogby International’s online panel, which is representative of the adult population of the U.S., was invited to participate. Slight weights were added to region, party, age, race, religion, gender, education to more accurately reflect the population. The margin of error is +/- 1.5 percentage points. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups. The MOE calculation is for sampling error only. Totals in topline reporting may not equal 100% due to rounding.
Tags: 2010 WBI U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey, Healthy Workplace Bill, WBI-Zogby
This entry was posted on Monday, September 6th, 2010 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Bullying Tutorials, Legislative Campaign, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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I strongly support a law for workplace bullying. At Mayo Clinic I experienced this for five years or more and it caused me physical and mental stress to the point that I was ill daily. I got daily migraine headaches, threw up at work, got sick to my stomach almost constantly and could not sleep as well as PTSD. After leaving Mayo I am a much healthier person with hardly any migraines and no more issues other than the anger from the experience that I endured there. Because of this anger I feel laws need to be enforced in every state in the USA. I feel we would all be better off with a law protecting us from this type of work abuse. I was in a very hostile environment there with several very dysfunctional employees, managers, and a HR rep and administrator who sided in with a poor manager and a rude and abuse head of section (physician) who had a long history of firing anyone who he didn’t get along with, and there were plenty over the years. Nothing was done on my behalf other than things which made it worse and worse until I was finally fired for things that I never did. It was truly hell. They even offended ADA laws which I was told I had a good legal case against them for.
I also was bullied at the Mayo Clinic–more than 8 years. Like Diana, I was in a very hostile environment with very dysfunctional employees, managers, and HR reps.
Mayo supported the bullies 100%. I ended up with severe depression and was removed from the work area. The only way to keep employment at Mayo was by signing a form saying I wouldn’t go public with the details. In return, Mayo placed me in a Return to Work program–where I was moved to and from temporary assignments–where my ADA restrictions were not respected. In face, my doctor put me on short term disability several (3-4) more time when the bullying in thetemporary assignments intensified.
Mayo eventually reniged on its agreement to let me participate in the RTW program until I found work. I was laid off in Jan 2009. I wake up 3-5 times per night with nightmares about the situation. I have not been able to find work since, and I have applied for SSI disability. I still jump out my chair if someone walks up behind me. Meanwhile, the original bullies have been promoted to better paying positions.