Note: the reference at the end to NY Senate bill passage refers to a 2010 result. In 2011, two bills — Assembly 4528 and Senate 4289 — are alive and well. Track progress toward passage here.

[WBI note:  We await an update about the cause of the turmoil when 300+ people rushed management and caused the man's death in the workplace. You might also want to read about Premilla D'Cruz's research on the HR function inside Indian companies working for other nations. Murder is a crime, not bullying.]

GHAZIABAD: A 45-year-old human resources manager, who was employed with Allied Nippon, succumbed to his injuries on Sunday. Joginder Singh, who passed away around 12.15am, had suffered multiple head and chest injuries when workers of the factory clashed with the management on Saturday.

Company security supervisor Narendra Dabas and senior security official Ombir Singh remain in the intensive care unit of a local hospital in Kaushambi. Joginder was cremated at his paternal home in Baraut. He is survived by his wife, who is a CBI sleuth, and two minor sons and a minor daughter.

Meanwhile, the Link Road police arrested nine workers who had been named in a report filed by a company executive and slapped murder and attempt to murder charges on them. The report names 27 people who were allegedly part of the brawl, along with 300 unidentified persons.

”We have arrested those whose addresses were supplied by company officials. We will soon nab other accused. We have deployed armed police personnel at the factory as a precautionary measure,” said a senior police officer. The company, an Indo-Japanese venture, manufactures brakes and brake shoes for vehicles.

”The trouble started so suddenly that we have not been able to fix the responsibility of either the workers or the company brass. Parties are blaming each other. But, we will soon know,” said the city police chief A K Vijeta.

The unit’s human resources vice-president Mahendra Chowdhary told media on Sunday the attack by the workers was murderous. ”It was premeditated and unprovoked. Workers attacked and chased the human resources staff and those on the board of directors,” he said.

Despite repeated attempts, leaders belonging to workers union could not be contacted.

Meanwhile, industrialists in Ghaziabad expressed shock at the violence at Allied Nippon. The secretary of Sahibabad Industrial Association, Ravindra Kapoor, said, ”This never happened in Ghaziabad earlier. There were clashes in Gurgaon, and then in Greater Noida, when an Italian firm’s chief was killed in 2008. I do not know who was responsible for Saturday’s violence. But, nobody should take the law into his hands. This should not have happened.”

Added S K Maheshwari, a prominent businessman in Sahibabad, ”Whatever happened was terrible. The guilty must be brought to book and severely punished.”

Read the NY Times story by Steven Greenhouse, one of few labor reporters left in the country.

Read colleague law professor David Yamada’s interpretation of the case and implications for bullied workers.

After a workplace bullying experience that left him physically sick, Brad Grinde quit his job as a South Florida executive and became a teacher. Grinde, 53, says he spent three years being told by a boss that he was “stupid” and “didn’t know how to manage people.”

“Why did I put up with that? I didn’t know what I was going through,” says Grinde, who was always a top performer and didn’t understand until changing careers that he had been the target of a workplace bully. That’s common says Gary Namie, who operates the Workplace Bullying Institute with his wife, Ruth, once the victim of an office bully. “The person doesn’t know they’re being bullied. They just accept it – ‘it’s just more of the same.’ We rationalize it,” Namie says.

It’s often when the victim becomes ill and goes to the family doctor that the physician tells the victim to leave the job, he says. Physical signs of stress can include nausea, profuse sweating, rapid heartbeat, elevated blood pressure and chest pain.

At some companies, bullying “becomes a management strategy,” Namie says. “It’s seen as motivational. Or, the bully is the friend of the executive.” Employees know that “if they dare to raise a fuss, they’ll be retaliated against.”

Stress during the economic recession has only made the office climate more ripe for bullying.

Thirty-five percent of adult Americans say they have experienced bullying in the workplace, first hand according to surveys conducted this year by Zogby International for the Workplace Bullying Institute. The surveys defined workplace bullying as “repeated, health harming abusive conduct committed by bosses and co-workers” and “repeated mistreatment, including sabotage by others, verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation and humilitation.

Of the bullies, 62 percent are male and 38 percent are female, according to the Institute survey. Nearly 60 percent of the bully targets are women.

Namie says people rationalize workplace bullying like they once did domestic violence: “If it was so bad, he should have left.”

He says it’s important that workers who are targets of office bullies don’t suffer in silence. “

Learn to tell people about it and learn to ask for help. But don’t ask for help in an emotional way. Make a fiscal argument: ‘This is so costly. Why tolerate the turnover and the absenteeism?’ ”

If you have to leave, you’ve put the responsibility on your employer, he says. “At least you leave with your mental health intact.”

E. Carol Webster, a clinical psychologist consultant in Fort Lauderdale, says her recommendation to someone who is being bullied at work usually is to leave the job. “In certain cultures, it’s entrenched. People are walking around yelling and screaming,” she says.

Workers facing an office bully might try saying, “I don’t appreciate that tone of voice or the way you’re talking to me,” Webster says.

But in today’s volatile office environment, she would advise workers who feel they are targets of bullies to complain directly to human resources or the company’s Employee Assistance Program.

Employees in a bullying environment usually get worn down mentally and physically, she says. “It shuts the employee down, makes them feel paralyzed and fully empowers the bully,” Webster says.

Workers often don’t speak up. “I see a lot of shaming. Professional people feel humiliated they have to go through that and don’t seem to be able to do anything about it,” she says.

One place to start is by filing a complaint, which also is a wise legal move. While there are no laws against bullying, it often falls within other legal action such as harassment or discrimination charges, says Suzanne Bogdan, a partner with the law firm of Fisher & Phillips in Fort Lauderdale.

Employers need to be proactive in counseling and disciplining workplace bullies, she says. Many don’t, because the bullies at the office “are often your top performers.”

But she tells employers, “If they don’t get it — and a lot of people at that level don’t — and if you don’t get rid of them and there’s a claim, you’re going to have a problem.”

A company facing a harassment or discrimination charge might argue that the bully involved “wasn’t mean to women, he was mean to everyone,” she says. But, “in this day and age, a lot of times, judges won’t dismiss those claims.” Employers don’t want these cases to go to a jury, she says, because jurors will likely put themselves in the victim’s shoes and rule for the worker.

When the behavior is repeated and outrageous, there could be a legal claim of “intentional infliction of emotional distress,” Bogdan says. An example might be a bully who relentlessly picks on a co-worker with a medical or mental impairment by calling the person ugly names.

Grinde has put his bullying experience behind him and is now a teacher at a local middle school. He can now recognize the early warning signs of bullying, which helps him guide students.

”

My mistake was staying in the industry when I should have moved on,” he says. Even though his pay was higher as a manager, “it wasn’t worth the psychological stress.”

An extensive article taking the broadest societal view of American culture.

Kim is being stalked in the halls by her supervisor. Her every move is scrutinized, judged. Every day, she is berated with personal insults suggesting that she’s just not good enough to work anywhere. The yelling and unfair accusations do not simply make her hate coming to work. It has led to more serious health issues.

Kim, a 29-year-old medical office worker, who didn’t want her last name used, has fallen into a depression. She’s losing weight, having panic attacks and, two months ago, had to take a leave of absence from work. The Berkeley resident is hoping to transfer to another office, but in the meantime, she’s going to counseling to heal. She dreads returning to her workplace and her bully.

“It’s like I’m stuck,” she says. “I don’t know what to do. I am sick, and I can’t change this person. I don’t want to lose my job.”

Bullying is a growing concern across the country, yet workplace bullying is a life-altering threat that rarely gathers the attention that schoolyard bullying does. Still, workplace bullying can prompt feelings of stress, depression and anxiety, and some say it can cause heart attacks and even lead to suicide.

There are no laws on the books in any state against workplace bullying and no easy legal recourse to embark on when bullying ruins lives.

Spouses Gary and Ruth Namie have heard thousands of stories as heartbreaking as Kim’s since 1997, when they developed an anti-workplace bullying organization in Benicia. Now called the Workplace Bullying Institute and headquartered in Bellingham, Wash., the center offers support and counseling to people who are victims of what the Namies call verbal violence in the workplace. They also commission studies to find out whom is being bullied at work and how bullying affects the workplace.

The Namies got into this business after Ruth Namie became a target for a bully at a Bay Area mental health center. Shortly after reporting to her job, she says she was screamed at in the halls, picked on by her boss and isolated from her co-workers.

“I felt I had done something wrong,” she says. “I did so well in my other jobs and never had a problem. I had a very good career. I just wanted to work. But I kept feeling like I was doing something wrong. I was ashamed, and I didn’t want to tell anybody.”

She was eventually put on administrative leave, and she and her husband made it their mission to fight workplace bullying.

“I am so worried about this,” says Gary Namie, visibly shaken during a recent seminar in South San Francisco where a young woman in tears shared that she had been bullied two years before. “You don’t typically read about the suicides that are related to this, the health problems. Yet we tell (victims of bullying) that if you don’t take care of your health, it will harm you in innumerable ways, and it could cost you your life.”

Workplace bullying can happen in any workplace, Namie says, and the targets are usually people who simply want to do their work undisturbed. The bully can be a boss, co-worker or supervisor. According to 2010 research by WBI (conducted by Zogby International), 35 percent of workers have experienced bullying firsthand, what amounts to 53 million people. The study says that 62 percent of bullies are men, while 58 percent of targets are women. Women target women 80 percent of time. Workplace bullies are usually jealous of the target’s accomplishments and drive, the Namies say.

“You’re sport,” Gary Namie says. “Targets are the salt of the Earth, and it gets you snookered.”

Peralta College District math professor William Lepowsky had been teaching at Laney College in Oakland for 32 years when bullies started targeting him in the early 2000s.

“It was something I was absolutely ignorant of until I experienced it,” he says. The bullying started after Lepowsky wrote and self-published a statistics textbook used at Laney. He was accused by an administrator of acting improperly and, even after being cleared of any wrongdoing, Lepowsky says he was threatened with the loss of his job.

“A good analogy to (workplace bullying) is that it’s like a mugging. You go to the theater and you’re walking home, and they steal your purse or something,” he says. “It’s obviously a huge violation, something no one is looking for. It comes out of the blue and prevents you from enjoying going out to the movie or whatever you were going to enjoy.”

Lepowsky fought back by gathering support from co-workers and won, eventually receiving a written apology from the then-Chancellor of the District for the “stress and strain” caused by actions of other administrators. A change in leadership at the college and District made him feel comfortable at work again.

Lepowsky talks openly about his experience because he wants to help others. He never sued the district nor got a settlement.

But if he had chosen to sue because of the bullying, he would have faced a daunting problem: The practice is not illegal in the workplace if it’s not based on discrimination and doesn’t fit the legal definition of harassment. Therefore, if a target chooses to take legal action they rarely win cases against their employers.

“They have no legal recourse because it’s not against the law,” says Michelle Smith, a Sacramento-based workplace advocate (the California Healthy Workplace Advocates) trying to gather support for the Healthy Workplace Bill. The bill, which has been introduced in several states and has died in committee in California, would define an “abusive work environment” and hold both the bully and the employer accountable for the harm workplace bullying causes.

So what can be done if you are a target of bullying?

The Namies assure targets that they are not alone, that they didn’t cause the bullying to happen.

“Bullying is domestic violence where the abuser is on the payroll,” Gary Namie says. And, like in cases of domestic violence, the victim is simply that, a victim.

In their book “The Bully At Work: What You Can Do to Stop the Hurt and Reclaim Your Dignity on the Job,” (Sourcebooks, $16.99) the Namies suggest ways of taking care of your needs first. See a therapist or work with a Workplace Bullying Institute expert to develop strategies for coping with the bully. In some cases, asking an employer to fix the problem is appropriate — but it could backfire. According to Workplace Bullying Institute research, in some cases the complaints are either ignored or the bullying is intensified.

In a worst-case scenario, if your health is being severely harmed, they suggest taking time off work or looking for alternative workplaces.

“I think your health is much more important than working at a job that can potentially kill you,” Ruth Namie says.

• Screaming Mimi: This bully isn’t afraid to yell at you. She controls through fear and intimidation, even throwing objects around the office.
• Constant Critic: The critic is an extremely negative nit-picker and aims to destroy confidence in your competence. He makes unreasonable demands for work with impossible deadlines and expects perfection.
• Two-Headed Snake: This bully is passive-aggressive, dishonest and indirect. He smiles to hide aggression.
• Gatekeeper: She controls all the resources you need to succeed, including money, staffing and time. She keeps her target out of the loop and makes new rules on a whim.

– excerpt from “The Bully At Work: What You Can Do to Stop the Hurt and Reclaim Your Dignity on the Job,” by Gary and Ruth Namie.

See original article:

http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_16460359

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Outsourced, NBC-TV show, premieres Sept. 23

From the network: “Outsourced” is a comedy where the Midwest meets the exotic East in a hilarious culture clash.

HaHa. Notwithstanding the crude stereotypes of Indians and the idiot American overseers who treat the workers like children (at least in the preview that the network must be proud to circulate publicly), there are serious problems facing Indian workers.

In India, the industry sector is called the ITES-BPO, information technology enabled services-business process outsourcing. India currently accounts for 46% of all global offshoring. The appeal, according to a 2003 NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies) report, is “an unbeatable mix of low costs, deep technical and language skills, mature vendors, and supportive government policies.” Even with the influx of offshoring financial services, the industry still provides mostly standardized and routinized services of low complexity, emphasizing mass production and customer service.  To better understand the pressures faced by Indian call center workers, read Premilla D’Cruz’s 2010 article described elsewhere at this site.

The dilemmas facing Americans are more dire. Losing 500,000 more jobs in July 2010 and several million displaced since the great recession, laughing about offshoring or outsourcing domestic jobs is no laughing matter. Lost jobs in the U.S. means more than in most other industrialized nations. Everyone in the world who loses a job loses wages , but in the U.S. you also lose affordable health insurance when you need it most to cope with escalated stressors, you risk losing your home to foreclosure and for too many there is the loss of identity.

A movie produced by New Line, with shooting that began in July, 2010, is expected to a summer 2011 R-rated blockbuster with an all-star cast. The storyline according to one Hollywood “insider” trade publication:

Three best friends who, fed up with abuse from their employers, enlist the help of a scam artist called MF Jones to help murder them. Two of the horrible bosses are a coke-addled heir to a chemical company and a nymphomaniac dentist. The publication then gushes that almost all of the roles in the script by Jonathan Goldstein and ex-”Freaks and Geeks” star John Francis Daley are “great.” Then, seemingly without irony it states — “it’s a very funny, enjoyably mean-spirited piece of work, and with a cast like this, could be one of the better comedies of next year.”

The problem I have with the premise is how  “funny and enjoyable” is juxtaposed with “mean-spirited”? This semantic pairing baffles me. After decades of media pounding us with “sex and violence,” maybe Hollywood next wants to package funny and mean-spirited to go together. Wonder if bullied targets think the abuse they endure is very funny?

Don’t think I reject funny. Those who have seen me speak have seen my brand of humor. And I have spent lots of evenings in comedy clubs; I love slapstick.

But I resent the fact that before the media ever get around to seriously exploring workplace bullying in depth (NBC cancelled its airing of a full Dateline show on bullying in 2007), they want to trivialize it as if it were a joke.

Another funny hit, dilbert the comic strip, can be easily seen as mean spirited, too.

In conclusion, there’s money to be made laughing at, not with, the down and out during tough times. It’s a variation of the blame-the-victim theme rampant in our society.

Read the Aug. 24, 2010 post, From boss to bully: When has it gone too far?

Listen to the audio report.

Read this Aug. 23 article: “The Rise and Fall of Ted Genoways” by the editor of ZYZZYVASPEAKS, a journal of West Coast writers & authors

Note the correct spelling of his name Yamada, not Yamata.

There are some very important things they don’t tell you on career day. Chief among them is that there is a good chance that at some point during your working adult life you will have an abusive boss — the kind who uses his or her authority to torment subordinates. Bullying bosses scream, often with the goal of humiliating. They write up false evaluations to put good workers’ jobs at risk. Some are serial bullies, targeting one worker and, when he or she is gone, moving on to their next victim.

Bosses may abuse because they have impossibly high standards, are insecure or have not been properly socialized. But some simply enjoy it. Recent brain-scan research has shown that bullies are wired differently. When they see a victim in pain, it triggers parts of their brain associated with pleasure.

Worker abuse is a widespread problem — in a 2007 WBI-Zogby poll, 37% of American adults said they had been bullied at work — and most of it is perfectly legal. Workers who are abused based on their membership in a protected class — race, nationality or religion, among others — can sue under civil rights laws. But the law generally does not protect against plain old viciousness.

That may be about to change. Workers’ rights advocates have been campaigning for years to get states to enact laws against workplace bullying, and in May they scored their biggest victory. The New York state senate passed a bill that would let workers sue for physical, psychological or economic harm due to abusive treatment on the job. If New York’s Healthy Workplace Bill becomes law, workers who can show that they were subjected to hostile conduct — including verbal abuse, threats or work sabotage — could be awarded lost wages, medical expenses, compensation for emotional distress and punitive damages.

Not surprisingly, many employers oppose the bill. They argue that it would lead to frivolous lawsuits and put them at risk for nothing more than running a tight ship and expecting a lot from their workers. But supporters of the law point out that it is crafted to cover only the most offensive and deliberate abuse. The bill requires that wrongful conduct be done with “malice,” and in most cases that it has to be repeated. It also provides affirmative defenses for companies that investigate promptly and address the problem in good faith.

The New York state assembly is expected to take up the bill next year. At least 16 other states are considering similar bills, and some employment-law experts think antibullying legislation may have real momentum now.

Legislatures are not the only ones standing up to bullies. In 2008, the Indiana supreme court struck a blow against workplace bullying when it upheld a $325,000 verdict against a cardiovascular surgeon. A medical technician who operated a heart and lung machine during surgery accused the surgeon of charging at him with clenched fists, screaming and swearing. The formal legal claims were intentional infliction of emotional distress and assault, but the plaintiff argued it as a bullying case, and had an expert on workplace bullying testify at trial.

Ideally, employers should rein in abusive bosses on their own, but that rarely happens. Many bullies are close to powerful people in the organization and carefully target less powerful ones. When John Bolton was nominated to be ambassador to the U.N. by President George W. Bush, a former subordinate told the Senate that Bolton was a “serial abuser” and — in a phrase that has since entered the bullying lexicon — a “kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy.”

There are reasons workplace bullying may be getting worse now, including the bad economy. In good times, abused workers can simply walk out on a job if they are being mistreated. But with unemployment at around 9.5%, and five job seekers for every available job, many employees feel they have no choice but to stay put.

Another factor is the decline of organized labor. Unions were once a worker’s front-line defense against an abusive boss. If a supervisor was out of line, the shop steward would talk to him — on behalf of all of the workers. But union membership has fallen from 35% of the workforce in the 1950s to under 13% today, and some unions are less aggressive than they once were.

That leaves litigation. There seems to be a strong constituency for laws allowing workers to sue over workplace abuse. The vote on the Healthy Workplace Bill was bipartisan and not close: New York state senators favored it 45 to 16.

If states enact laws of this kind and lawsuits begin to be filed, juries are far more likely to sympathize with the bullied worker than the bullying boss — and damages awards could be large. There is one easy way for employers to head all of this off: get more serious about rooting out abusive bosses before serious damage is done.

###

Write a comment on the Time website (to counter the hard-heart idiots) or here.

Read the original article.

UPDATE: As of Thurs. July 22, 93% of those who voted want a law! To elected state & federal legislators: if you are looking for a “populist” thing to do to help your beleaguered constituents, turn your back on SHRM and the Chamber of Commerce and do something for the “small people” (aka, the real persons, not Supreme Court “persons,” the corporations.)

For those new to the Workplace Bullying Institute, visit our Healthy Workplace Bill Legislative Campaign website to see the history of the anti-bullying bill movement led by State Coordinators and citizen lobbyists just like you. Sign up to help in your state.

Check out Dr. Gary Namie in a variety of media appearances on the Workplace Bullying Institute’s YouTube Channel

Our YouTube videos provide education on the phenomenon of Workplace Bullying, guidance for targets of bullying, and suggestions for employers to create safe, healthy working environments.

New Berlin plaintiffs’ attorney Shannon D. McDonald frequently gets calls from people who claim to be victims of an abusive work environment.

But unless the “bullying” is tied to sexual harassment, age or gender discrimination, the employment law attorney generally has to deliver bad news. “In most instances I say, ‘Given the laws, there is nothing I can do for you,’” said McDonald, of Carroll & McDonald LLC.
That could change if Wisconsin becomes the first state to pass a law allowing employees to file suit in circuit court against an employer for workplace bullying.

Currently, workers’ compensation is typically the exclusive remedy for an employee with a claim against an employer. But Assembly Bill 894 provides that an employee can sue over an abusive work environment and potentially recover medical expenses, back pay, front pay, compensation for emotional distress, punitive damages and attorney fees.

Since 2003, 17 states have introduced similar proposals, but none have passed, according to the office of Rep. Kelda Roys, a sponsor of the Wisconsin legislation.

Mixed response

Plaintiffs’ lawyers view the proposal as closing a loophole in the law.
“It’s a way to make employers accountable and to provide a legal remedy for those employees who would otherwise have no remedy at law or legal recourse,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Theresa R. Gabriel. The Cullen Weston Pines & Bach LLP lawyer called the legislation a “gap filler” for those employees who do not fall into a protected category. “A lot of bullies are sophisticated and know not to invoke certain trigger words” that would suggest their bullying is driven by sexual or racial biases,” she noted.

But Waukesha defense attorney Joel S. Aziere suggested the law would make employers targets for litigation. He questioned the rationale of allowing employees to bring an action in circuit court, rather than going through an administrative process, which is the standard for other employment discrimination claims.

“It helps to have some agency facilitate claims and get responses from people,”  he said. “This seems like it will just open the floodgates to cases being brought against employers.” While the law prohibits an employee from recovering damages through both a workers’ compensation claim and a lawsuit — the plaintiff must choose one or the other — Aziere said there is still the possibility for some overlap.

For example, in a constructive discharge case, an employer might have to fight allegations on multiple fronts if an employee files a claim with the Equal Rights Division (ERD), but also brings a lawsuit in state court claiming workplace abuse.

The plaintiff could not “double-dip” on damages, but the employer would have to defend both the administrative claim over the discharge and the lawsuit over the atmosphere at work. “Now, we have an exclusive remedy for workers’ compensation claims,” Aziere said. “This bill creates multiple avenues and battling on multiple fronts.”

Defense attorneys also conjecture that the proposal could offer a back door method for obtaining discovery in ERD claims. “There is no discovery at the administrative level, [but] employees would now be able to use the court action to do discovery for the administrative action,” argued Aziere, of Buelow Vetter Buikema Olson & Vliet LLC.

The proposed legislation requires that suit be filed within one year “after the last act constituting the unlawful employment practice occurred,” but it does not limit how far back a plaintiff can then look.

Currently, an individual seeking to file an administrative claim with the ERD must do so within 300 days of the incident in question or the claim is barred. Aziere said that the new law would be problematic because “it invites claimants to sit on claims, let them accrue and then fire off lawsuits against an employer.”

Wisconsin Defense Counsel President Catherine M. Rottier agreed that the law could encourage “spite suits” from employees who may be unhappy, but not necessarily victims of workplace abuse.

She and Aziere noted that many businesses already have internal policies which prohibit general workplace abuse of those individuals who are not part of a protected class.

“This just adds a layer of angst to the workplace,” said Rottier, of Boardman, Suhr, Curry & Field LLP.

Read the original article

Feel free to send your thoughts along to Joel Azeire: jaziere@buelowvetter.com ; Catherine Rottier:  crottier@boardmanlawfirm.com  ;   Theresa R. Gabriel ;  Shannon D. McDonald

[See post to watch Flash video]

You can track progress of the Wisconsin Healthy Workplace Bill at our Legislative Campaign website.

TARPON SPRINGS — If, as authorities charge, Arunya Rouch shot a colleague to death March 30 at the Tarpon Springs (Florida) Publix (grocery store), she represents a rare class of criminal: women who kill in the workplace.

Rouch would be part of an “infinitesimal” group of women who have killed people in workplace disputes, said Carter Hay, an associate professor of criminology at Florida State University.

Only 5 percent of workplace homicides are committed by women, said Larry Barton, the author of four books on crisis management and violence at work who teaches at the FBI Academy.

“We have fewer women who cross that line because they are willing to tolerate it (a perceived negative work environment) more,” Barton said. “When a woman crosses a line and takes a weapon and uses it, it’s a very significant event in the study of workplace violence because we just do not see a lot of it.”

James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University in Boston who has studied workplace violence extensively, said women generally turn to violence “if all else fails.” Men, on the other hand, see violence as an offensive weapon “to show who’s boss, to take charge,” Fox said.

And that, in part, has to do with gender differences in coping with stress, Hay said.

Women tend to internalize strain, which can result in depression or harming themselves. Men are more likely to externalize their responses to stress, which can include aggression against other people, Hay said.

Fox said women are less likely to attach their identity to their employment and are often better at balancing work, family and social obligations.

“If a guy loses his job, he often feels like he’s lost everything,” Fox said. “Women don’t view their self-worth through their employment. They can, but it’s much less common.”

Rouch does not precisely conform to the gender stereotype. She has no children and was heavily involved with her job, where she was known as an unrelenting perfectionist. Rouch was a trainer called upon by Publix management to open seafood departments in new stores.

She arrived at the Publix in Tarpon Springs about three years ago. Within months, Rouch began complaining that co-workers were taunting her about her meticulous approach to the job, according to her friends and family. She was told to “go back and get into her hole” and called “anal.” One of those co-workers, they said, was Gregory Janowski, 40, whom Rouch is accused of killing. His family vehemently denies that he taunted or bullied Rouch.

“It’s not that they (victims of such abuse) snap,” said Gary Namie, a social psychologist and co-founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute. “It’s the slow constant exposure to the stress, humiliation, forms of intimidation that could drive a person to take action.”

On March 27, Janowski reported Rouch for violating Publix’s policy of working at the store before punching in. She in turn threatened him. Janowski reported the threat, according to authorities.

Rouch was fired three days later. Around noon that same day, authorities say, Rouch shot and killed Janowski as he sat in his car in the parking lot. Still armed, she entered the store, where she was shot and wounded by a Tarpon Springs police detective. She remains hospitalized at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg.

Family and friends said Rouch, 41, loved her job. “She would cook up food and bring it to co-workers for lunch,” said Kenneth Rouch, her father-in-law. He said she takes great pride in her work and her family. He links the shooting to her love of both.

“It’s the craziest thing,” Kenneth Rouch said. “But I believe she didn’t want to disgrace the family.”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of workplace homicides decreased by a little more than half from 1994, when there were 1,080, to 2008, when there were 517. That’s because the vast majority are committed during other crimes, such as robbery, and the overall violent crime rate has decreased.

Workplace bullying, on the other hand, is neither rare nor declining.

More than a third of the U.S. work force report being bullied on the job, according to a 2007 survey conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute and Zogby International. Another 12 percent say they’ve witnessed it.

While research into workplace bullying is fairly new, experts draw a direct parallel between bullying and workplace violence.

“People don’t have an escape route any more,” said Namie, the co-founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute. “With the job market, they stay in miserable situations for health insurance.”

Only a handful of women have made national news in the slaying of co-workers or supervisors.

Most recently, a female professor at the University of Alabama at Huntsville was charged with killing three people and wounding three in an on-campus shooting rampage in February. Amy Bishop had recently been denied tenure. After the shooting, colleagues reported that Bishop had long exhibited strange behavior.

Nearly all of the other women involved in high-profile homicides had a history of mental illness. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Rouch.

In January 2006, a former employee of a U.S. Postal Service mail-sorting plant in Goleta, Calif., opened fire on her former colleagues, killing six before turning the gun on herself. Jennifer San Marco had been granted early retirement because of psychological problems.

In April 1997, two nursing home administrators in Louis­ville, Ky., were shot to death by Kimberly Harris, a former employee who reportedly had a history of mental illness. She was sentenced to life in prison.

Times researchers Shirl Kennedy and Carolyn Edds contributed to this report.

Read the original article

On Feb. 3, 2008,  Jodie Zebell took her own life … A Spanish teacher testified she was “iced out and isolated” for four years by older colleagues in her school district. Once a marathon runner, she now suffers from clinical depression, chest pain, panic attacks and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Dr. Deborah Lemke told lawmakers of an unnamed Wisconsin hospital where the nursing supervisor verbally bullied nurses on his staff. When she intervened on behalf of the nurses, she herself became a target.

Amid emotional testimony, bill targets workplace bullying

In 2008, 31-year-old Jodie Zebell appeared to have a full life. The UW-Madison graduate was married with two young children and a part-time job as a mammographer at a La Crosse clinic, where she was praised as a model employee.

Jodie Zebell, 31, took her own life in 2008 after months of workplace bullying, her aunt told an Assembly committee Wednesday. Zebell's family is backing a bill that would outlaw workplace harassment in Wisconsin. Photo courtesy of the Jodie Zebell family

But soon afterward, Zebell became the target of co-workers who unfairly blamed her for problems at work. After she was promoted, the bullying intensified, her aunt Joie Bostwick recalled during a legislative hearing Wednesday attended by members of her niece’s family, including Zebell’s mother, Jean Jones of Spring Hill, Fla.

After her niece had a run-in with her supervisor, Bostwick said, the boss joined in the harassment, filling Zebell’s personnel file with baseless complaints about her performance and loudly criticizing her in front of others.

“This went on for a series of months,” said Bostwick, a Blue Mounds native who now lives in Naples, Fla. “It just got worse and worse.”

On Feb. 3, 2008, the day before she was to receive a poor job review, Jodie Zebell took her own life. A Madison attorney told the family it had no legal recourse since she wasn’t protected from workplace discrimination as would be an older worker or a racial, ethnic or religious minority.

“We were astounded to find there was nothing we could do. There were no laws unless you were part of a protected class,” Bostwick said.

The tragedy sparked Zebell’s family to join the national movement seeking to ban bullying from workplaces and give victims — who prefer to call themselves “targets” — tools to stop the harassment or sue abusive employers and bullies in court.

Abusive conduct

On Wednesday, the Assembly Labor Committee heard 90 minutes of often emotional testimony on a bill sponsored by state Rep. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, that would require employers to implement and enforce anti-bullying policies — or face their abused employees in court.

Seventeen states are considering such legislation, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute of Bellingham, Wash., whose director, Gary Namie, also testified at the hearing.

Under the proposal, workers who believe they have been harmed by “abusive conduct” could sue to force the employer to stop the bullying, to seek reinstatement or to get compensation for lost wages, medical costs, attorneys’ fees, emotional distress and punitive damages.

The bill defines abusive conduct as “repeated infliction of verbal abuse, verbal or physical conduct that is threatening, intimidating or humiliating, sabotage or undermining of an employee’s work performance or exploitation of an employee’s known psychological or physical vulnerability.”

Vaguely worded bill

Representatives of business groups told the committee the bill is too vaguely worded and would invite frivolous lawsuits by disgruntled and incompetent workers.

“AB 894 paints a target on the back of small employers … (who) can’t afford to fight claims in circuit courts,” said Pete Hanson, director of government relations for the Wisconsin Restaurant Association.

Andrew Cook of the Wisconsin Civil Justice Council, a consortium of large business groups, agreed. Cook said if Wisconsin becomes the first state to pass such a bill, it would harm the state’s ability to attract business.

Emotional stories

But at the hearing, such concerns were largely overshadowed by these stories:

· A Spanish teacher testified she was “iced out and isolated” for four years by older colleagues in her school district. Once a marathon runner, Susan Stiede now suffers from clinical depression, chest pain, panic attacks and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. She quit teaching in 2009.

· A nervous state employee told of being harassed by a unnamed female boss in a state agency that she declined to name. Intimidated by her knowledge of the agency, the new supervisor circulated untrue rumors about her, and banished her to an office with no phone and separated her from her co-workers. When she took a six-month stress leave, the supervisor started bullying other members of the staff, she said.

· Dr. Deborah Lemke told lawmakers of an unnamed Wisconsin hospital where the nursing supervisor verbally bullied nurses on his staff. When she intervened on behalf of the nurses, Lemke said, holding back tears, she herself became a target.

Corliss Olson, associate professor at the UW-Extension’s School for Workers, said the bill is “desperately” needed.
Olson said most targets of bullying are “normal, competent people” who can be driven to disability or even death.

“This is a viciousness in the workplace that we need to stop,” Olson said. “We can and we must change our workplaces so they are civil.”

Read the original article. Track progress of the Wisconsin bill AB 894 at the Legislative Campaign website.

Wondering why we turn on victims so easily

Belated press attention to a January 2010 student suicide is based on the special cruelty teens employed after the girl’s death. What does this say about us and our society? A Gary Namie podcast.

Download Podcast 15 (in .mp3 format)

Most schools have policies that target bullying, but they are usually aimed at students. Now, school districts in Iowa and California are developing rules to prevent teachers from bullying teachers.  …

The Sioux City, Iowa, community school district approved its policy last April. Desert Sands Unified School District of La Quinta, Calif., is awaiting final passage later this month. The two school districts are believed to be the only ones nationwide developing anti-bullying policies for their adult employees, said Gary Namie, who with his wife, Ruth Namie, founded the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Wash.

Read the original article

WBI:  ERRORS in the article

1) the policies we write with school districts apply to all adults (administrators, certificated and classified staff) and adults to students, not just teacher-on-teacher.

2) the fee for the project included 5 days of on-site training, including the creation and training for an internal team of expert peers, not just policy writing.

3) the Namies never claimed to be psychologists (states notoriously prohibit this designation even when one earns a doctorate in psychology). It is the reporter’s conclusion.

4) the headline is wrong by omitting so much information

Other than these four problems, the article is perfect!  Journalism students, take note.

“As I saw her approaching, my stomach would be full of dread that there was going to be a confrontation,” says Kennedy. “It was always intimidating.”

The job was her first out of design school. And while she was excited about creating window treatments and selecting furniture for upscale homes, Kennedy soon found herself persistently bullied by her colleague. “She focused on me and made my first year a living hell,” Kennedy recalls.

THE FEMALE BULLY
Beware the bully in heels. A U.S. survey found that 40 percent of workplace heavies are women — surprising, given our allegedly maternal natures — and that they tend to pick on their XX-chromosome colleagues. In fact, women are the most common targets of bullies of either gender, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute, based in Bellingham, Washington, which led the 2007 study. And while there aren’t any national statistics about bullying on the job in Canada, the experts say it’s prevalent here, too. Quebec, a leader in addressing the issue, receives around 2,000 complaints a year at its labour commission from non-union employees alone.

What’s more, research has found that the damage caused by bullying can be more severe than that of other, more high-profile cubicle troubles. A Canadian study determined that victims of bullying were more stressed and withdrawn, and less satisfied with their jobs, than those of sexual harassment.

“It’s one of the most important health problems in the workplace today,” confirms Angelo Soares, who teaches organizational behaviour at the Université du Québec à Montréal and has listened to nurses and engineers alike recount traumatic tales. “Bullying can happen anywhere. No one’s safe.”

WHAT’S BULLYING?
Workplace bullying is defined as deliberate and focused mistreatment of an employee. Quebec, the first jurisdiction in North America to specifically protect against this type of psychological harassment, describes it as repeated, vexatious behaviour that erodes a worker’s dignity. Tactics range from the loud — yelling, door slamming and ranting — to the subtle: A bullied employee might find herself excluded from important meetings or assigned tasks without adequate resources to complete them. Her co-workers could be recruited in a campaign to isolate her. And behind her back, the bully may trash her to higher-ups, although bosses themselves are often the culprits.

In his research, Soares has seen victims of a slew of behaviours that even his first-year management students recognize as inappropriate: a supermarket cashier who received letters from a supervisor every few days detailing minor infractions — an unironed uniform, shoes not conforming to code, arriving two minutes late; a secretary whose computer was “losing files,” who eventually learned it wasn’t a virus but a colleague deleting them after hours; and a hospital-pharmacy worker whose boss tried to control her day so much that even her bathroom breaks were monitored.

WHO’S THE TARGET?
The employee under attack is often a competent, committed one, singled out for her strengths, not her weaknesses. And she’s often on her own, says Gary Namie, the research director for the Workplace Bullying Institute. “Even though it’s a form of violence — psychological violence — it’s still seen as the victim’s fault.”

Experts also note that the gender — of the bully or target — doesn’t determine whether this happens or to whom; rather, bullying typically occurs in an organization with poor leadership. “There is an element of bullying that’s simply predator-prey,” says Diane Rodgers, project coordinator for BullyFreeBC, a lobby and education group. “And when people are allowed to behave badly, you do have the Lord of the Flies factor that takes over.”

HOW DOES IT HURT?
High blood pressure, clinical depression, diabetes, even post-traumatic-stress disorder can befall a bullied employee. While working at a public-relations firm on the West Coast, Laura Adams* developed shingles. Her boss’s hallmark behaviour included storming out of meetings, throwing news releases in subordinates’ faces and shouting at her staff: “What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you think?” After only four months, Adams could no longer cope with the bullying — she had to quit.

As with many employees subjected to this mistreatment, Adams’s confidence also suffered a hit. “Before I quit, I had to convince myself that it wasn’t me; it was her,” says Adams. “But even to this day, I still have self-doubt.”

The disruptive behaviour under fluorescent lights also goes beyond the personal: It hurts colleagues, hampers productivity and costs the health-care system. The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, a federal agency, reports that bullying cultivates an unhealthy environment, which increases absenteeism and turnover and decreases motivation and morale among employees.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Start by keeping a record of what’s happening, then seek out help and support wherever you can, whether it’s through your union, your doctor or a lawyer, says Rodgers. But she warns that you could encounter resistance: “Be aware that all of this can be framed to make you look neurotic, paranoid and unstable.”

In Canada, protection against workplace bullying depends on where you earn your paycheque. Quebec, Saskatchewan and the federal government have specific legislation to protect bullied employees. Ontario just passed a similar law, which will take effect in June. And if the bullying is linked to issues such as gender, race or disability, you can make a case under human-rights law.

But for many working Canadians, the only option — beyond quitting or being fired, the most common outcomes, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute — is a potentially costly and time-consuming battle in court. Initially, there wasn’t even a legal recourse, points out Christine Thomlinson, an employment lawyer in Toronto. But in the past decade, there have been a number of high-profile victories for bullied employees, built around constructive dismissal or personal injury, including a $950,000 settlement in 2006 for a female officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Whatever your decision, says Rodgers, take the steps necessary to protect your health, financial security and reputation — and be willing to walk away from your job. “If you try to hang on, if you care too much about the work you do and the career you’ve built, then you may be putting other, more important things at serious risk.”

LIFE LESSONS
For Kennedy, the Ottawa interior designer, there was a happy ending. After a year revamping homes and assisting other designers, she felt confident enough to stand up to her tormentor. And she took a deep breath and reported the bully’s actions to the company’s owner. The bully was reprimanded and, when things didn’t change, she was fired three months later. “

It was a great life lesson for me,” says Kennedy, who went on to redesign official residences in the capital and is now based in Calgary. “As I continued my career and eventually opened my own design firm, I knew to watch the interactions among my staff to ensure that I never had a bully working for me.”

*Name has been changed.

[See post to watch Flash video]

“We want to relate to each other and to our families as good, moral, just people who do the right thing and then we go out to the corporate culture and it’s this horrible dog-eat-dog, greed, anything-goes culture.” Victor Fresco, show creator

The fact is that we ran a large national study looking at lots of aspects of bullying at work. The trouble is that the media love the catfight (woman-on-woman) angle. Or shall I say, the editors, love it. Most reporters get the big picture. Fact: most of the bullying is done by men.

One blogger sorted through the B.S. and got it right — Abby L. Ferber — at the Huffington Post.  She sees that most bullying is about abuse of authority and power. Bullying is certainly complex and comes in a variety of forms, but common to all types is the perpetrator’s CONTROL over another human being. The perp’s insatiable need, made possible by either unknowing or corrupt employers, and the harm it causes the targeted person’s health, sense of identity, livelihood, family and career.

So in the noisy, error-prone, cranky and eccentric world of bloggers, Ferber got it right! WBI commends and thanks you.

GN

What do you readers think? Feel free to comment below.

WARNING: Video contains explicit language.

By Liz Wolgemuth US News and World Report: The Inside Job February 3, 2009

A September 2007 Zogby survey found 37 percent of Americans workers have been bullied at work. The precise definition of a bully is tough to come by, but Washington state’s Department of Labor says it’s behavior that “intimidates, degrades, offends, or humiliates a worker, often in front of others. Bullying behavior creates feelings of defenselessness in the target and undermines an individualÕs right to dignity at work.”

That sounds a lot like an audio recording of a lengthy tirade reportedly delivered by actor Christian Bale while filming Terminator Salvation last summer. The voice that allegedly belongs to Bale berates the film’s director of photography for walking onto the set while filming. The tantrum seems to happen in front of the film’s director, who is at one point drawn into the tirade.

One of the most interesting stats about workplace bullying is where it happens–largely in public. From the Zogby survey, as cited by the Workplace Bullying Institute:

Question: Where did the majority of the mistreatment occur?

Responses:
Out in the open, in front of others, (53.9%)
Behind closed doors, in silence, (31.6%)
Behind doors kept open so others could hear, (10.2%)
Not sure, (4.3%)
The Bullying Institute has a guide for folks who have been bullied here. (Perhaps someone should pass it around Hollywood.)

The 1st Workplace Bullying Work Session

WA State House Commerce & Labor Committee

December, 2004

Thanks to the leadership of Committee Chair, House Rep. Steve Conway, the legislature was introduced to the phenomenon of workplace bullying prior to the introduction of the first bill in 2005.

Presenters included Drs. Gary and Ruth Namie (WBI) and Bonnie McAllister

On April 18, 2007, the Senate Rules Committee heard testimony about the workplace bullying bill, SB 1035. No committee vote was ever taken.

Features WBI colleague and expert Carrie Clark
Co-Founder, California Healthy Workplace Advocates

[See post to watch Flash video]
 

Workplace Bullying: A Management Primer by Adam Penenberg

and

How to Handle a Workplace Bully by Jennifer Alsever

By Kent R. Davies
Golf Course Management
April 2009

Although everyone is cognizant that workplace bullying exists, many superintendents may not know they have a serious problem until their employees — or even club members — complain or their team’s loyalty decreases and turnover rates soar for their most valuable workers.

When good employees head for the hills it’s too late to motivate them to stay in an atmosphere they perceive as toxic and affecting their ability to do their jobs, their health and their safety.

Bullies, when you think about it, indirectly target their superintendent’s right to lead. When employees follow a bully’s more threatening “leadership,” legitimate directives, by default, are quietly undermined. Workers come to fear a bully’s retribution over less-threatening formal authority.

When bullies attack, they’re attacking not just one person, but the entire organization. The organizational costs of bullying behaviors include high turnover, increased medical/disability claims for emotional stress, work efforts directed away from productive work toward unproductive coping activities, depression and even physical problems, plus the cost of investigations/litigations. Without question, employees in a threatening atmosphere cannot contribute their best work.

Bullying ‘because they can’

toxic behavior National workplace bullying expert Gary Namie, Ph.D., the president of Work Doctor Inc. (workdoctor.com) in Bellingham, Wash., finds that people bully “because they can.” The three factors Namie finds that enable bullying are:

Opportunity. “The employer creates the opportunity where people are pitted against one another in a zero-sum competition so the opportunity to go after someone to advance your career is possible,” Namie says.

A willingness and desire to further one’s career. “It only takes a few people who are relatively ambitious and career-focused and who are willing to exploit others to get ahead,” according to Namie. “You also need a pool of easily exploited targets who believe in a meritorious workplace, have a very strong work ethic and are apolitically focused on their work.”

Employer response. “Bullying is either stopped by the employer or rewarded by the employer when the bully is promoted,” Namie says. “Ignoring bullying is tacit approval that advances and sustains bullying. When employers promote bullies, the message to employees is real clear that that’s what it’s going to take to get ahead.

“Bullies test the water, and if a person does not push back, they set their claws in,” Namie says. Targets often are reluctant to report bullying for “fear of retaliation. It is deer-in-the-headlights paralysis because they do not believe that what is happening to them is actually happening.”

Bullied employees find it difficult to concentrate on their work. The performance standards that superintendents are expecting from their crews go unmet unless they identify bullying behaviors and appropriately address them. In fact, it’s not unheard of for supervisors to misdirect their attention on the targets of the bullying by giving them poor performance reviews instead of dealing with the bully who is the root cause of reduced performance.

Individuals or groups of employees are being bullied when, for example, they are being treated differently from the rest of the work group, being sworn at, being excluded or socially isolated, being shouted at or humiliated, being the brunt of unceasing practical jokes, facing unwarranted or invalid criticism, being blamed without justification or facing excessive performance monitoring. Bullying is different from aggression in that aggression can involve a single act, whereas bullying entails repeated attacks against a target or a group. Single harsh or egregious acts don’t automatically constitute bullying.

Bullies are less likely to engage in anti-social behaviors when everyone clearly understands that such behavior is unacceptable and that they will likely face punishment up to and including dismissal. Reporting of bullying incidents must be encouraged from every employee’s first day on the job. Otherwise, superintendents are severely handicapped in their attempts to create and maintain a bully-free productive atmosphere.

Taking it to the state house

A recent state court ruling, combined with increasing state legislative consideration assigning employer accountability for generic workplace bullying, goes beyond traditional state and federally protected classes in increasing potential liability. Current anti-bullying legislative attempts are very similar to current protected-class harassment laws.

Johan Lubbe, an attorney with the law firm of Jackson Lewis in White Plains, N.Y., who conducts seminars on workplace bullying, says, “It is a refinement that addresses the same type of harassment behavior that is inappropriate and abusive. Bullying is a more general abusive behavior.” Lubbe foresees that “the next year or two will most likely see some movement in state legislation due to an increase in the number of states that are attempting to legislate bullying laws. Each time bullying laws are resubmitted, legislators become more sensitized to the issues. When one state passes legislation, it is going to make the argument all the stronger.”

Unfortunately, bullies today continue to operate with near impunity. According to Namie, “In 40 percent of cases, targets considered the employer’s investigation to be inadequate or unfair, with less than 2 percent of investigations described as fair and safe for the bullied person.” Unbelievably, given the damage they do, only 6.2 percent of alleged bullies faced punishment.

“The myth,” Namie says, “is that bullies are indispensable and great producers. Bullies undermine legitimate business interests. Bullying is all about interpersonal agendas getting accomplished, but not the business’ agenda.”

Workplace bullies, Namie points out, share one common goal: “Advancing their position within the company at others’ expense. Therefore, they target your best employees ‹ the very independent, more technically skilled, better liked, ethical and nonconfrontational workers you can least afford to lose.” Employees’ reluctance at reporting comes from fear of retribution or labeling as a snitch. And when superiors bully, subordinates justifiably fear termination.

Support from the top

To effectively deal with bullying tactics, superintendents require organization-wide backup, from enforceable anti-bullying policies to top management’s support of superintendents who discipline or dismiss disruptive bullies. Demonstrated top management declarations promoting a zero-tolerance anti-bullying policy that identify all forms of harassment as unacceptable are central to implementing an effective anti-bullying policy. Awareness campaigns defining bullying and reporting procedures with a real open-door policy clearly identifying an independent reporting contact eases employee-reporting concerns. Management sensitivity from the top down is obligatory when identifying or responding to conflicts.

“Employers should incorporate the various conducts that encompass bullying into their regular harassment/workplace violence training. When employees are hired, let them know upfront that bullying behavior faces discipline up to and including discharge,” advises attorney E. Jewele Johnson, a partner at Fisher and Phillips Law Firm in Atlanta.

“Reinforce this throughout the workforce just as you would your regular no-harassment policies that apply to people in protected categories. A lot of it is disseminating the information and letting people know that bullying is not going to be tolerated, if you complain you will not be retaliated against, and if there is a problem we will jump in and correct it.”

Johnson recommends to her clients “that they incorporate broader language into their existing harassment policy, language supporting good behavior at work.” Incorporate statements into your harassment policy clearly defining bullying behavior with concrete examples and penalties. Hard-driving bosses, for instance, are not necessarily bullies.

• Johnson finds the most common mistakes employers make when investigating complaints are: Not promptly investigating or taking complaints seriously
• Not taking corrective action
• Not adequately documenting what the complaint was and the actions taken.

“Employers can ask an employee making a complaint about bullying to put it in writing, but they should not require it before they launch an investigation,” Johnson stresses. “They should investigate it whether it is oral, anonymous or in writing. There is nothing wrong with the person taking the complaint to go ahead and put it in writing and take it back to the complainant for them to sign at the bottom that the written statement is correct.”

It is incumbent on management to help their team members report bullying behaviors by creating a system so that individuals, who are too often fearful to be the only one to stand up against a bully, feel safe making a report. “You do not want to have the target have to solve their problem,” Namie recommends.

Making the system work

When confronted with bullying situations, all levels of management must “first get beyond denial about bullying existing and they must declare bullying as unacceptable. If this is not done,” Namie emphasizes, “all other steps are undermined.”

It is imperative to approach bullying impersonally. “Instead of requiring an executive to personally confront a bully, the best thing to do is to approach bullying with a system. Go at the bullying, not the bully,” Namie advises. Do not make it a witch-hunt. It is important to take a systemic approach with “your policy doing the work for you.”

When crafting an anti-bullying policy, Namie recommends incorporating the following components: Start with a clear definition of what unacceptable bullying is, and what it is not. Bullying, Namie clarifies, “is not conflict, not routine exercise of management prerogative.”

The policy must introduce management responsibility to report peers.

The bullies themselves must not be allowed to misuse the policy against people who are not bullies or to harass somebody.

Guarantees must exist that there is no retaliation for merely filing a complaint. In practice, all bullies want to retaliate for being exposed. They rely on the silence of the target and everyone ignoring the bullying.

Put policy and enforcement procedures in place on how complaints are handled and who your internal investigators are going to be. It’s important to build in a quick response time to clear the matter up quickly because bullies like to drag it out.

Consider innovative and informal remedies like apologies — they can go really far. “The goal,” Namie says, “is not to fire anybody, but to constrain bullying behavior.”

Finally, Namie says, “apply your policy to all employees at all levels.”

Management must proactively encourage and personally demonstrate appropriate personal and team anti-bullying behaviors. “Employers are well served not to ignore workplace bullying. This is not just a theoretical debate,” Lubbe warns, “as employers will have to deal with this more sooner than later.”

[See post to watch Flash video]

Joan Frye, featured in the clip below, is the Tennessee State Coordinator for the WBI-Legislative Campaign.

The bullying magazine executive played by Meryl Streep in the film “The Devil Wears Prada” is played for laughs, but women bullying other female employees in the real world is no laughing matter.

Joan Frye, who worked in a hospital in Nashville, Tenn., said she endured nearly two years of bullying at the hands of her female boss, which led her to a mental breakdown and a long court battle.

Just four months into her job, Frye, 62, said she knew there was going to be trouble with her boss.

“She had me come into her office for my 90-day review, and she started, ‘We don’t click. … What are you going to do about it?’ Not what are we going to do, but what are you going to do about it,” Frye said. “I knew then that we were going to have a serious problem.”

Frye said her boss undermined her in front of employees, isolated her from senior management, gave her impossible deadlines and humiliated her. She dreaded going to work.

“One day she would be nice, and the next day she would attack,” Frye said. “She would glare at me. She would make noise like ‘haaa’ if I was talking to somebody. She would walk between us and turn her back on me.”

After she complained to human resources and senior management, she said, she was transferred to another department. After six months in her new position, Frye said the problems with her previous boss led to a mental breakdown, forcing her to take a medical leave of absence.

Frye filed a lawsuit against the company. Four years later, after exhausting her savings, the case was dismissed. The court did, however, describe her old boss as “an equal opportunity oppressor,” calling her management style “abrasive” and declaring that the difficult relationship contributed to “disabling problems” for Frye.

Suffering in Silence
Many women are afraid to confront their bullying bosses and suffer in silence, said Gary Namie, a psychologist and founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute.

“You should not have to risk clinical depression, debilitating anxiety, or — and as 30 percent of women experience — post-traumatic stress disorder. You shouldn’t have a war wound in the workplace,” Namie said.

It’s a war being fought across the country in all types of workplaces. An estimated 54 million people say they have been bullied at work, according to a 2007 WBI survey conducted by Zogby International.

While men tend to target male and female employees equally, women bosses are likely to aim their hostility toward other women more than 70 percent of the time, according to a survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute.

Workplace experts have different theories on why women more often target other women. Some say these women see female co-workers as possible competition for only a few top-level positions.

Namie said it’s more important to get help, not try to analyze the tormenter’s motives. The institute says more than 80 percent of those bullied lose their jobs, and 41 percent suffer clinical depression.

Recovering Bullies Confess
The Growth Leadership Center in California counsels women whose “tough” office demeanor amounted to aggression.

In a “bully broads” roundtable discussion, a group of women talked about their hostile workplace behavior.

“I actually made someone cry. I sort of went over the edge, and as I closed the door I thought, ‘That was not me in there,’” said Christine Forter, one of the women in the roundtable.

“I knew I was a bully, but I thought I was justified. It is the perfection combined with the urgency that creates a lethal combination,” said Christine King, another woman who took part in the discussion.

By attending counseling groups, some “bully broads” said, they hope they will be able to recognize how their negative behavior affects others and try to make changes in their management style.

“Like, you never say, ‘That is stupid,’ but you pause and say something like, ‘That is an interesting idea, and let’s talk about it,’” said Monica Palm, another group member.

But for people like Joan Frye who have been bullied, the debilitating effects of a hostile work environment may last forever.

“I feel like this took away my life as it was. It caused damage to my family; it caused damage to my reputation; it caused damage to us significantly financially,” Frye said. “I feel like it was probably the worst thing that has happened to me in my entire life.”