By Janice Crompton, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Thursday, April 21, 2011

When Tom Shannon accepted a job 15 years ago, he expected to raise his family and retire after a long, satisfying career.

But instead, the 51-year-old information technology specialist from Butler County found himself confronted with what he describes as an alcoholic, abusive supervisor who, he said, eventually drove him from his job — and nearly out of his mind.

“There were days when I didn’t think I could make it through the day. It was that bad,” said Mr. Shannon, who left his job two years ago after complaints about his supervisor went nowhere.

After years of suffering through drunken outbursts and insults, the stress also took its toll on Mr. Shannon’s health, eventually causing him to develop high blood pressure and anxiety.

“If I would have stayed there, I’d be dead by now,” said Mr. Shannon, now happily employed by the federal government.

Mr. Shannon’s case isn’t unique, and he’s one of a growing number of people who are willing to testify before state lawmakers about workplace bullying and its consequences.

They are being organized by Washington, Pa., native Gary Namie, who heads the Workplace Bullying Institute, a nonprofit group devoted to resolving the issue.

A 2010 poll commissioned by the WBI and conducted by Zogby International showed that 35 percent of Americans reported being bullied at work; 9 percent said they were currently being bullied and 26 percent said they had experienced workplace bullying in the past.

Once a worker becomes a target of a workplace bully, research shows that person has a six in 10 chance of losing his or her job, Mr. Namie said.
“Forty percent quit and 24 percent get fired,” said Mr. Namie. He co-founded the research and education organization that would eventually become the WBI 14 years ago with his wife, Ruth Namie, after she experienced workplace bullying firsthand.

A 1970 graduate of Washington High School and 1974 graduate of Washington & Jefferson College, Mr. Namie met his wife, an Upland, Calif., native, when he moved to California to attend graduate school.

Married in 1983, the couple stayed in California for many years working in the psychology field: Ms. Namie worked as a therapist for chemically dependent people, and her husband was a business consultant.

A job transfer to a new mental health clinic in 1995 put Ms. Namie face to face with the issue that still stirs her passion today.

Though one of her new colleagues welcomed her to the job with a hug — “beware of the hug,” Ms. Namie warns — the claws soon came out, and the female colleague began a campaign of bullying against Ms. Namie that she said went on for several years.

It included verbal insults, sarcastic remarks, put-downs during staff meetings and “just constant digs,” criticizing everything from her clothing to her personality, Ms. Namie remembered.

“She had me running from place to place to avoid her,” said Ms. Namie, who was also ostracized by co-workers who didn’t want to get involved in the issue.

Ms. Namie said she received glowing evaluations, but was eventually placed on administrative leave for “insubordination,” then lost her job.

Employers — whether private companies, universities or small businesses — have been reluctant to take action against bullies, citing litigation concerns and workplace policies that don’t address such abuse. Most often, employees are expected to sort out personality conflicts among themselves, and it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between ordinary disputes and bullying.

It’s a pattern of repeated mistreatment, insults, verbal abuse and even sometimes sabotage and threats, that defines workplace bullying today, Mr. Namie said.

The push for legislation to curb it has gained traction in recent years, with 20 states introducing measures to outlaw bullying, though no laws have yet been passed.

Most states have laws on the books addressing physical, emotional and cyber bullying, but they pertain mostly to education law, governing primary and high school students.

In New Jersey, legislators and prosecutors recently found themselves grappling with how to charge two Rutgers University students who were accused of surreptitiously filming an intimate encounter between fellow student Tyler Clementi and another man.

Mr. Clementi, 18, committed suicide after the students posted the video on the Internet.

His roommate, Dharun Ravi, was indicted Wednesday on a hate crime charge. If convicted of the most serious bias charge on the 15-count indictment, Mr. Ravi could face five to 10 years in prison.

Other countries have begun crafting laws aimed at criminalizing workplace bullying. In Australia, new legislation would make it a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

The new legislation was prompted in part by the 2006 suicide of a 19-year-old waitress who was tormented by her co-workers.

At issue is how exactly to define workplace bullying, and recognizing the ways it differs from harassment or civil rights infringements, which are already outlawed in the U.S. if they involve discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion or national origin.

That’s why the Namies developed the Healthy Workplace Bill, a model designed to steer legislation by addressing the concerns of employers as well as employees with high standards of proof and independent medical evaluations.

They recruit volunteers, such as Mr. Shannon and others who have been targeted by bullies, to give testimony in front of legislative committees.
“I think that once one state passes legislation … it will be a domino effect,” said lawyer Jason Habinsky, who co-authored a Jan. 21 article about the legal issues surrounding workplace abuse in the New York Law Journal.

The Namies, who eventually relocated to Bellingham, Wash., have written several books about bullying. Their latest, “The Bully Free Workplace,” will be released May 23.

The couple have been featured in more than 900 print and broadcast media outlets and Mr. Namie has served as an expert witness in lawsuits, including during a 2005 jury trial in Indiana in which the plaintiff won a $325,000 verdict for emotional distress against his former employer.
Mr. Namie said he’s proud to stand up for people targeted by bullies, but it isn’t always an easy job.

“It’s tough to be mired in the misery of others,” he said. “Nobody calls us with good news. It’s like running a domestic violence hotline, except it’s in the workplace.”

Janice Crompton: jcrompton@post-gazette.com or 724-223-0156.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11111/1140772-55-0.stm?cmpid=localstate.xml#ixzz1KBUGl0BC

Cyber-bullying is just one form of workplace bullying that is becoming prevalent in the U.S. Here are the warning signs to watch for, and what you can do to prevent it.

Kevin Morrisey, the 52-year-old managing editor of the award-winning Virginia Quarterly Review, walked to a nearby area of the University of Virginia campus on July 30, 2010, and shot himself in the head. According to an ABC News report, 18 calls were made to appropriate officials to report that Morrisey was the target of workplace bullying and was seeking protection from his employer. The report alleges that the university may not have responded in a timely manner to the employee’s plea for help.

Morrisey’s suicide is only one of many workplace shootings that result from bullying. In fact, the growing epidemic of workplace bullying has been featured in a recent documentary entitled, Murder by Proxy, released in parts of the U.S. and Canada.

Workplace bullying expert Dr. Gary Namie, President of the Workplace Bullying Institute defines bullying as “repeated mistreatment: sabotage by others that prevent work from getting done, verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation and humiliation.” It is any behavior by employers or co-workers that subject targets to repeated, abusive conduct resulting in health-harming physical and psychological effects. Information and communications technologies such as E-mail, Instant Messaging and social networks can be part of this toxic mix of mistreatment. Indeed, while much research has been devoted to the study of cyber-bullying in middle- and high-school, there is little credible research to date on the role of cyber-bullying in the workplace.

Workplace bullying in general looks to be fairly widespread. The Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) commissioned Zogby International to collect data for its 2010 U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey. Two surveys were conducted for this report: one with several items that had 4,210 survey respondents (MOE +/- 1.5 percentage points); and one single-item survey that had 2,092 respondents (MOE +/- 2.2 percentage points). Each sample was representative of all American adults in August 2010. The results are alarming:

• 35% of workers have experienced bullying firsthand
• 62% of bullies are men; 58% of targets are women
• Women bullies target women in 80% of cases
• Bullying at work is four times more prevalent than illegal harassment (2007)
• Same-gender harassment accounts for more than two thirds (68%) of bullying

In addition to the 35% of the U.S. workforce (an estimated 53.5 million Americans) who report being bullied at work, another 15% say they have witnessed it happen to someone else. Half of all workers report neither experiencing nor witnessing bullying.

The 2010 survey is a follow-up to the WBI’s first national study, conducted by Zogby in 2007. A comparison of results from the two surveys shows that little has changed. In 2007:

• 37% of U.S. workers reported being bullied; an estimated 54 million Americans.
• Half of all Americans said they had directly experienced workplace bullying; an additional 15% reported witnessing it.
• 72% of bullies were bosses; with 62% male and 58% women.
• 68% of bullying was same-gender harassment.
• 45% of targets experienced health-related problems.

In a more productive economy, 34% of bullied targets report voluntarily quitting their jobs to avoid further mistreatment according to an on-line poll conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute. The current economic recession lends itself to escalating harassing behavior, and workplace bullies are inflicting greater risk to both targets and their respective organizations.

Cyber-Bullying: Not Just for Schoolkids

Cyber-bullying in the workplace can range from a few incidences to a pattern of behavior over time that eventually unveils a story. Examples include:

• Unwanted links to dating services or sexually charged material;
• Business emails sent only targeted employees that require a reply (especially during vacations or while out on disability);
• Threatening voice mails, E-mails or text mesages.

It is often the combination of cyber-bullying and in-person bullying that paints a complete picture of dangerous workplace behavior. Among the damaging behavior to watch out for in your bosses, co-workers and employees are:

• Shunning
• Verbal abuse
• Threats or intimidation
• Sabotage
• Malicious rumors or gossip
• Unreasonable work loads
• Mobbing by other co-workers
• Creating unsubstantiated performance deficiencies in attempt to undermine a target

Additional examples include public humiliation or embarrassment, hyper-criticism, yelling in meetings (or virtually) and degrading a co-worker or subordinate.

Workplace bullies are astute at manipulating superiors and often deliver strong business results with disregard toward organizational values.  CIO’s need to pay particular attention to these key areas to watch for any signs of workplace bullying:

• Organizational restructuring efforts
• Performance management and talent review calibration discussions
• Employee stress levels.

In addition, any reports of bullying made by employees — regardless of how incidental they may appear initially – must be investigated. When IT cultures fail to encourage alternate points of view to the status-quo or open channels of communication, trouble may be waiting in the wings.

The CIO’s Role in Risk Management

Workplace bullying is a silent epidemic that creates significant risk management issues for employees, enterprises and potential shareholders. It requires decisive and committed action from CIOs and senior executives. As organizations address greater transparency in response to financial reform and governmental mandates in financial reporting, it is critical for IT executives to leverage people and technology to prevent this form of behavior from occurring and taking root within their workplaces.

Employers who fail to adopt smart people policies and practices may be facing potential litigation when behavior crosses the line and employees become targets, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and Time. Sixteen states have introduced legislation that would allow employees who have been physically, psychologically or economically abused while on the job to file charges against their employer, direct managers, and bystanders.

Leading From the Front

CIOs are well poised to add strategic value by:

• Conducting vulnerability assessments of IT leaders and professional staff.
• Designing a collaborative and clear, written policy that communicates zero tolerance toward inappropriate, hostile behavior through personal and/or various technologies, including smartphones, texting, and social media.
• Demonstrating swift action when workforce intelligence identifies risk.
• Leveraging internal social media channels to communicate and reinforce IT’s commitment to addressing concerns.
• Re-aligning performance measures of IT leadership team.
• Establishing an enterprise-wide reporting system, an integrity/ethics hotline, and overall process that sends alerts to a designated officer about threatening behaviors.
• Optimizing collaboration platforms and business intelligence tools for increased transparency, communication and accountability.
• Managing, measuring, and monitoring workplace stress.

By addressing the issue head-on, pro-active CIO’s will reduce risk management issues and create an environment that fosters top performance and execution of strategic initiatives whereby employees are engaged, feel valued, and safe.

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.

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

A recently published journal article by Janet Raver confirmed that those who endure ethnic harassment (which is legal and actionable) have their misery compounded when also bullied. It is an additive effect. [Once, twice or three times as harmful? Ethnic harassment, gender harassment and generalized workplace harassment.  by J.L. Raver & L.H. Nishii.  Journal of Applied Psychology,  2010, 95 (2), 236-254.]

WBI Research Director, Gary Namie, PhD
© 2010, Workplace Bullying Institute

Because bullying ignores gender and rank boundaries, it makes sense that hyperaggressive perpetrators of abusive misconduct do not identify with a particular political party. Nor are targets selected principally based on a political ideology.

However, in the 2007 WBI survey and now again in the 2010 WBI national survey, the reported prevalence rates for bullying differ based on party affiliation and ideology. Here are the results and comparisons with the national average.

Question: “At work, what is your experience with any or all of the following types of repeated mistreatment: sabotage by others that prevented work from getting done, verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation or humiliation?”

Survey respondents were asked if they identified with one of the two major political parties or if they self-identified as independents.

A similar pattern emerges when respondents were asked to identify their political ideology.

Thus, Republicans and Conservatives reported less bullying and were more likely to report no experience with bullying at all. In other words, party affiliation and ideology may be serve as a perceptual filter, a lens through which the phenomenon of bullying is interpreted.

Many people do not realize they are being bullied. It is a shameful experience that one does not readily admit to. It’s a stigmatizing act. The findings above illustrate that a conservative perspective makes one less likely to admit that bullying (“repeated mistreatment” as used in the definition in the survey) occurs; conversely, being politically liberal seems to make a person more likely to define observed or experienced misconduct as bullying.

What cannot be determined from the data alone is whether conservatives underestimate bullying that is occurring or if liberals overestimate its occurrence.

WBI Research Director, Gary Namie, PhD
© 2010, Workplace Bullying Institute

Gender of targets:  58% are women;  42% are men

Gender of perpetrators:  62% men;  38% women

Men bullies target  men in 55.5% of cases; women in 45.5%

What tends to make news (based on the 2007 WBI findings) is that women bullies target women in 79.8% of cases;  men in 20.2%.  In 2007, the woman-on-woman bullying prevalence was 71%. Now it is 80%. Looks like the American workplace is grower ever more toxic for women, at the hands of women.

The frequencies of all gender dyads of all bullying: 34% male perp/male target;  30% female perp/female target; 28% male perp/female target; and  8% female perp/male target.

For our set of alternative explanations for this phenomenon, read this. and a UK story and the Today Show.

All of the above results are from Survey 1 (details below). The results below are from Survey 2 (details below).

Female and male survey respondents reacted differently to the prevalence question.

WBI Research Director, Gary Namie, PhD
© 2010, Workplace Bullying Institute

Survey 2. Zogby International was commissioned by the Workplace Bullying Institute to conduct an online survey of 2,092 adults from 8/18/10 to 8/23/10.  The margin of error is +/- 2.2 percentage points.

Another good person is a New York City-based HR professional who blogs and has written a book called the HR Toolkit and works with our NY State group to pass the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill, despite SHRM’s official opposition to the legislation.

I write this love letter at the request of HR folks who hate reading the negative news about how HR does too little to stop bullying within their organizations. Believe me, I hate the fact that HR doesn’t help enough, too.

Really, I want to tout the value HR brings to organizations, but I need proof. I do not demonize HR. They are not wicked, ok maybe threatening, but not demonic. But I report the experiences bullied targets tell us. It’s that simple.

Clearly individuals are separate from the institutional role that dictates that they serve their executive masters and allow bullies to operate with impunity. The caveat is that whatever personal conflict over doing the right thing or the commanded or expected thing should compel more HR folks to be ethical, right and just.

That’s why I rely on empirical and anecdotal data to shape the story. HR folks, here is what 462 people who probably had been bullied told us on our summer 2010 online Instant Poll.

The percentage of cases in which HR took action and stopped the bullying: 3.4. There it is — the good news. Headline:  HR Effectively Stops Bullying (3% of the time). HR you earned it. Celebrate. The 3%-ers are the good people. But what about the rest of you?

In 60% of cases HR did nothing after bullying was reported to them. Doing nothing was followed by an increase in bullying, for 26.6% of respondents.

Worse still, HR botched matters by taking action that helped the alleged bully and hurt the complainant in 32.5% of cases.

This is the reality confirmed by WBI coaches who have listened to over 6,000 detailed tales. And you might want to view the contributions to the WBI HR Forum.

Don’t get defensive. Don’t attack WBI. Just do the right thing for the person hurt by the ones typically more powerful. Stop siding with the powerful just to keep your job or to curry favor from them. Grow a conscience. Be moral leaders. Teach executives about bullying and show them how destructive it is, for people and for leaders.

Now the Good News …

Here’s some great news for HR staffers. Though you have not fooled those who turned to you for help inside your organizations, the general public believes that HR is serving aggrieved employees. This statistic is derived from the latest 2010 WBI scientific national poll.

14.3% of adult Americans credited HR with taking appropriate actions that stopped the bullying with positive outcomes for the target (compared to the 3.4% from the non-scientific online poll of people with actual experience as customers or HR).

Botched efforts occurred in only 5.3% of cases.

HR doing nothing was estimated at 24.9%, allowing the bullying to continue but in only 6.2% of situations was the target harmed by increased bullying.

In the majority of cases, 51%  of adult Americans , survey respondents were not sure if HR was told about the workplace bullying situation.

So, HR, please do not demonize WBI. Do better and we will gladly report it.

Workplace bullying was defined as “repeated mistreatment: sabotage by others that prevented work from getting done, verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation or humiliation.”

In a separate survey, a representative sample of 4,210 respondents was asked about employer engagement in anti-bullying activities. The vast majority (79%) either were not sure or were certain that employers do little to nothing to address it. Remarkably, 21% believed that U.S. employers are currently addressing it through policies and enforcement.

Though the question specifically asked about an anti-bullying policy separate from harassment and violence policies, which most employers do have, one-fifth of respondents still believed that employers had additional procedures to stop bullying.

“This surprising result is probably wishful thinking by bullied individuals and their friends who want to believe that their employer cares about them,” says Dr. Gary Namie, WBI Director. “Similar studies in Scandinavian countries where anti-bullying laws began in the mid-1990′s find a much lower employer compliance rate.”

The positive attitude toward employers was further illustrated by 56% of respondents reporting confidence that American employers would voluntarily stop bullying without being mandated by law to do so. Only 32% disagreed, believing only a legal obligation would compel action.

Respondents were also asked whether they support or oppose workplace bullying laws like the ones that have been introduced in 17 states since 2003 by the Healthy Workplace Bill Campaign. In 2010, both the New York and Illinois Senates passed the bill. However it has not yet become law in any state.

Of the WBI-Zogby respondents, 64% supported having laws to protect workers from “malicious, health-harming abusive conduct” committed by bosses and co-workers (the specific language contained in the introduced bills). 23.8% opposed laws. Gary Namie concludes, “Clearly a majority of Americans want a law. This statistic will be given to lawmakers as proof of the popular appeal of such legislation.”

###

Contact:
Gary Namie, PhD
360-656-6630
info@workplacebullying.org

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.

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

Read the original article.

Retired auto dealer joins Healthy Workplace Bill movement

STEUBENVILLE – It’s not as long a journey from automobile dealer to citizen advocate if one is committed to a cause. The switch in John Smurda’s life came as a result of reading a book and considering what he’s seen in his own family over the years. Smurda, a city resident, is now a volunteer citizen advocate for Ohio to pass a bill offering legal remedies to targets of workplace bullying.

HEALTHY WORKPLACE EFFORT — John Smurda discusses his work as an advocate for the Healthy Workplace bill in Ohio. The Steubenville resident is a retired businessman who said he became involved in the effort for new laws to protect against workplace bullying after reading a book by one of the national leaders of the effort, Dr. Gary Namie. -- Paul Giannamore

Smurda said he read a book by Dr. Gary Namie, who, with his wife, Dr. Ruth Namie, has written “The Bully at Work.”
The Namies are professional educators – he with a doctorate in social psychology and she with a doctorate in clinical psychology. Ruth Namie experienced bullying in the workplace firsthand in the mid-1990s. She and her husband founded the Workplace Bullying Institute in the late 1990s as the Work Doctor website, now found as www.workplacebullying.org.

They have led efforts across the nation to have states enact anti-bullying measures to protect people who aren’t covered by the usual sexual harassment or anti-harassment policies and laws.

Smurda said he’s seen the effects of workplace bullying twice within his own family. He said he was fortunate never to have had to deal with the issue when he was one of the principals of the former J & J auto dealership in Toronto, which closed in late 2008.

“We had 25 employees,” he said. “They were a big family. It was the greatest group you could ever hope for. We all cared for other people. And that’s why this knocks me out.”

Smurda said he got in touch with the Namies and was asked to become an advocate for an anti-bullying Healthy Workplace bill in Ohio. So far, according to the healthyworkplacebill.org website, 17 states have introduced such bills since 2003. Smurda said hopes are that Ohio will be the 18th. No state has passed such a bill.

“Current laws do not apply when a person fails to fall into one of the protected classes,” he said.

Federal anti-discrimination and harassment policies focus on preventing harassment that is based on race, sex, religion or national origin, but offers no legal remedies when harassment is not based on those characteristics.

It’s also not about physical violence, which is prohibited by laws. Smurda said that’s where a healthy workplace bill helps.

“It’s the same in every situation. The bullies take aim at their targets. The bullies believe the world revolves around them and have a way of manipulating others into helping them,” he said. Smurda said the treatment involves blame for errors, criticism of ability and insults. It can be evidenced in slamming doors or exclusionary treatment in the workplace.

Businesses have policies against such treatment, but Smurda said targets often don’t want to report they’re being bullied because of fear of reprisal or job loss. Co-workers don’t get involved, he said, because they fear being shunned or becoming targets themselves. A Healthy Workplace bill isn’t about outlawing people who are merely jerks with bad behavior. For claims to be brought, the target has to prove actual health or psychological impact resulting from the maltreatment from a boss or co-worker.

The Healthy Workplace movement includes protections for employers. Smurda said he wouldn’t be involved in placing greater burdens on business as a businessman himself. “It protects the employer and punishes the bully,” he said.

Targets in every case that would find legal remedies under the law have become ill as a result of the bullying, experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder or anxiety. Targets leave their jobs or some commit suicide.
The Workplace Bullying Institute commissioned the Zogby polling organization, through a gift by the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention to survey Americans on workplace bullying.

The findings of the online survey of 7,740 adults, released in 2007, find 37 percent of workers say they have been bullied. Most bullies are bosses and about 60 percent of the bullies are men with 57 percent of the targets being women. The survey also found 71 percent of the female bullies target other women and 54 percent of male bullies target men.
Bullying is four times more prevalent than illegal discriminatory harassment, the survey found.

The survey found that, when employers are made aware of bullying that does not fall into the illegal discrimination category, some 62 percent did nothing. Some 18 percent of the respondents said the employer actually made the situation worse for the target.

Respondents said verbal abuse and threatening, intimidation, humiliation and hostility were most often the tactics, with abuse of authority and interference with work also prevalent.

The Workplace Bullying Institute did a non-scientific update with 422 respondents in 2009 in response to claims in the business press that employers were weeding out bullies as part of cuts made to respond to the recession. That survey found 31.3 percent of the bullying targets who responded lost their jobs by layoff, termination or quitting, while another 12.3 percent were off because of psychological injuries. In most cases, the employer had done nothing after learning of the bullying.

Read the article and be sure to answer her question at the end. We have written extensively about it here. And that’s our famous WBI-Zogby survey quoted in the article.

Article features the brave and bullied target Julie Soderstrom. As well as ridiculous notions from employer attorney Karen Buesing that corporations facing cutbacks are less likely to tolerate the antics of an employee who is perceived to be a bully and “There are too many great people out there who are not abusive.”

And the comment “Could you be a whinier baby? Blame a bully for everything. Perhaps you are just mentally weak…” from Keith. Yeh, right! The pro-corporate mindset has blinded workers to their ability to feel compassion for other workers.

Read the article

How A Woman Becomes a Bully
More employees are suffering at their colleagues’ hands
By Carly Chynoweth and Tariq Tahi
The Sunday Times (London)
June 7, 2009

It would be nice to think that in hard times colleagues pull together to support each other but in some organisations the opposite is true.

The Andrea Adams Trust, a charity that fights against bullying at work, says the recession has led to a sharp rise in the number of people seeking help. At the same time, many employees say they are too scared of losing their jobs to risk doing anything about it, according to Lyn Witheridge, the trust’s chief executive.

She estimates that there has been a 50% rise in the number of calls coming in to the charity’s help line since the recession hit. “That’s a big increase,” she said. “And many of the callers are really worried about their jobs and say that they don’t want to raise grievances – they just want support.”

Even in good times, victims of bullying can find it hard to complain, but now they are so worried about being branded as troublemakers that they simply put up with it. “People are more afraid about speaking up because they are worried about what it might mean for their job and their mortgage,” she said. This in turn means that bullies have a much freer rein. “The recession means that workplaces have become almost a playground for bullies,” said Witheridge.

And, just as teachers discuss whether boys or girls make the worst playground bullies, questions are being raised about whether male and female bullies act differently at work. Much of this has been sparked by a recent New York Times article which reported that, while men make up the majority of bullies, women bullies pick on other women 71% of the time.

Julie Morris at Russell, Jones & Walker, the law firm, said that men and women exhibit different bullying styles. “Female bullying can be a bit more subtle, whereas male bullies throw their weight around without really being aware of their actions,” she said.

She believes that bullying of women by their female bosses can often arise from friction about issues such as childcare.

“I have seen circumstances when there is a woman who has sorted out her own childcare arrangements in a way that suits her [without] necessarily being understanding about another woman,” she said. “For instance ‘I have a nanny, why can’t you do the same?’ or ‘I took six months’ maternity leave, why do you think you need a year?’.”

Lisa Clark, 33, a PR consultant, experienced difficulties with a woman manager in a previous job. “It is a tenet of PR that each agency should have at least one woman with a gigantic ego who is unbearable to work with and a complete bullying maniac,” she said. “I’ve never worked with a bullying bloke in PR – only other women.

“I once worked with a woman who would do everything, from taking credit for your work and blaming you for everything that went wrong to being rude to your face in front of clients. I was driven into a position where I wasn’t able to have my own ideas because she said it was undermining her and her authority.

“When it came to things like the hours we worked, there was one rule for her and one for everyone else.”

Sharon Mavin, associate dean at Newcastle Business School, turns the issue round. “Is it bullying or is it just a woman not meeting another woman’s expectations?” she said.

Mavin argues that we associate many of the characteristics of leadership – assertiveness, ambition and so forth – with masculinity, while women are expected to be helpful, friendly and compassionate. When people do not conform to these stereotypes, it jolts our expectations.

“If you look at the research, it’s not a surprise to me that women would perceive other women to be picking on them, because women have very different expectations of other women at work than they do of men,” said Mavin. “Women react to men bosses as bosses but react to women bosses as women.

“Great strides have been made since the 1970s but there are still gender stereotypes that we all use and they drive our expectations of how people behave.” In other words, what might be seen as acceptable behaviour in a man might not be acceptable in women.

Some women believe that being bullied by another woman has a different psychological effect too. One woman who left her job as an office administrator at an engineering con-sultancy after being bullied, said: “I feel that if it was a man I could almost turn round and tell him to get lost, but I felt I couldn’t do that to another woman,” she said. “It was difficult to deal with because it was so unexpected. You don’t expect it from a female who has a family. That’s what was strange.”

Ultimately, however, bullying is about power. The idea that women in authority are supposed to see other women as their sisters but actually treat them with disdain makes a good story – it was the basis of The Devil Wears Prada, the best-selling book and hit film. However, this ignores other statistics from the same research, which show that 32% of all bullying is man-on-man, 29% is woman-on-woman, 28% is man-on-woman, and 11% woman-on-man – 60% of all bullies are men.

Indeed, Witheridge believes that the figures can largely be explained by the fact that most bullies tend to be managers and that most managers tend to be men. When women are in positions of authority it is often in female-dominated professions, which could mean that women bullies target women simply because that’s who is at hand.

“It reflects the make-up of the workforce, not a deliberate choice by women to pick on other women.” What’s important is not worrying about the sex of the people doing the bullying but how it can be stopped, said Witheridge.

Read the original article at the Sunday Times site.

The statistics quoted in this UK article are not from the NY Times, but from the WBI-Zogby survey of adult Americans.

1. Targets under report it (40% of targets never tell). Employers simply may not know about it.
2. Most (80%) bullying is legal, rendering laws and law-compliant policies inapplicable
3. Thus, 62% of employers either do nothing or worsen the situation (retaliation) because they can do so with legal impunity.
4. The majority of bullies (73%) are managers; senior managers and HR reflexively side with management when disputes arise.
5. Bullies derive 73% of their support from executives, peer managers and HR
6. Bullies (an unknown percentage) are following orders from above
7. Executives have been bullied by the bullies. They are afraid to act. They have a disproportionate fear of lawsuits brought by the bully if they dare investigate or sanction the bully.
8. Bullies invented their reputation as indispensable high-performers in case they were ever exposed. Target complainants are then not believed.
9. Employers don’t actually know how to stop it. They forgot the lessons learned from having to correct and prevent illegal discrimination.
10. Employers don’t recognize bullying as violence in the workplace. The problem is erroneously defined as “conflict,” and the wrong solutions are applied.
11. Our society is highly aggressive and competitive. Bullies embody these two popular tactics. Hostility is more normative than the exception. So, bullying/abuse/psychological violence at work is positively embraced more often than despised.

WBI

By MICKEY MEECE
New York Times
May 10, 2009

YELLING, scheming and sabotaging: all are tell-tale signs that a bully is at work, laying traps for employees at every pass.

During this downturn, as stress levels rise, workplace researchers say, bullies are likely to sharpen their elbows and ratchet up their attacks.

It’s probably no surprise that most of these bullies are men, as a survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an advocacy group, makes clear. But a good 40 percent of bullies are women. And at least the male bullies take an egalitarian approach, mowing down men and women pretty much in equal measure. The women appear to prefer their own kind, choosing other women as targets more than 70 percent of the time.

In the name of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, what is going on here?

Read the rest of the article