May 6 launched Nurses Week, promoted by the American Nurses Association. It’s a time to honor some of the most selfless working professionals you will ever know. Florence Nightingale was the founder of the profession. The 2012 theme for the Week is Advocating, Leading, Caring.
The sad part is that for all their caring and altruism that benefits all of us, the sacrifices of personal health and workplace status are staggering. Nurses are the primary targets of workplace bullying in the healthcare world. Not only do arrogant physicians (lords of the trade) pummel nurses, nurses often mistreat their own. They call it “lateral violence.”
WBI salutes Nurses for understanding workplace bullying and for being such strong advocates for our legislation in states to prevent and correct bullying. Thank you.
Taking up the full front page of the Sunday April 22 edition of the Sioux City (Iowa) Journal newspaper was an editorial written by the Journal editorial board screaming the headline:
WE MUST STOP BULLYING. IT STARTS HERE. IT STARTS NOW.
Using our Instant Poll capability here at the WBI website, we asked 311 respondents (98% of whom are self-declared targets of bullying):
Does (did) your employer have a specific policy prohibiting workplace bullying? [It can be part of another policy, but there must be protections for everyone, regardless of sex, age, religion, etc.]
Alex Castellanos, Republican activist & campaign funder, puts a face to condescension and a frustrated desire to dominate a smarter adversary, Rachel Maddow, host of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, on NBC Meet the Press (4/29/12). Check out his facial contortions after she calls him out for interrupting her, not knowing he is still on camera.
The second point that this clip illustrates are that facts aren’t facts anymore when a rationalist (Maddow) thinks facts are indisuptable and the other side (Castellanos) refuses to acknowledge anything she says. (See Chris Mooney’s new book: The Republican Brain.)
Anyone who has heard a WBI speech or attended Workplace Bullying University since 2010 has heard me talk extensively about the danger of shortened telomeres (the protective caps at the ends of our DNA chromosomes that allow cells to replicate and keep us young). Elizabeth Blackburn, of UCSF, showed that chronically stressed mothers of special needs children probably have a shorter life expectancy (a loss of between 9 and 12 years) than other mothers from shortened telomeres. Her discovery earned her a 2009 Nobel Prize for Medicine & Physiology.
A new longitudinal study published April 24 in Molecular Psychiatry found that children who experienced early-life stressors at age 5 — maternal domestic violence, frequent bullying victimization, or maltreatment by adults — suffered significantly more telomere erosion at age 10 than peers not exposed to stressful violence.
Women can be nastier bullies than men, at the workplace. What’s the best way to deal?
When Lady Gaga declared her hero was Emily-Anne, the 18-year-old pioneer of WeStopHate.org against teen bullying, I could completely identify. I had a flashback to my traumatic adolescent years. The memories alone made me feel like Emily-Anne could be my hero too.
Think Maypole? Yes, but, there is so much more. May Day started in the U.S. in the late 1880′s to commemorate the struggle by workers to shorten 10-16 hour workdays to 8-hours. At its 1884 national convention in Chicago, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (the future AFL), proclaimed that “eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.” The federation called for workers to negotiate with their employers for an eight-hour workday and, if that failed, to call a general strike on May 1 in support of the demand. The terrible aftermath of that first May Day 1886 in Chicago, the Haymarket massacre, would convince politicians and businesses to move labor events to Labor Day in September so the memory of what happened in 1886 would be erased from public memory.
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May 6 launched Nurses Week, promoted by the American Nurses Association. It’s a time to honor some of the most selfless working professionals you will ever know. Florence Nightingale was the founder of the profession. The 2012 theme for the Week is Advocating, Leading, Caring.
Taking up the full front page of the Sunday April 22 edition of the Sioux City (Iowa) Journal newspaper was an editorial written by the Journal editorial board screaming the headline:
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