Understanding, Defining and Eliminating Workplace Bullying

Assuring dignity at work

Jerry A. Carbo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317004479
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Workplace bullying is a severe and pervasive problem around the globe and in particular in the United States where no meaningful steps have been taken to address this problem. This book will help readers to understand and to define workplace bullying to be able to prevent, detect, remedy and eliminate workplace bullying. Readers will gain an understanding of the forms, causes and effects of workplace bullying. Readers will also be able to understand the current gaps in U.S. law and become familiar with more effective international laws to address workplace bullying. Finally, the reader will be presented with the potential paths to put an end to workplace bullying in their own workplace and in workplaces across the globe.

Section 1

Understanding workplace bullying

The phenomenon of workplace bullying is still not completely understood. There are still today too many myths and misunderstandings about bullying. In my research and in my time conducting training on workplace bullying, I have heard the following myths:

Myth:	Bullying is simply a childhood phenomenon that kids experience in schools and on playgrounds.
Fact:	Bullying is something that impacts millions of working adults, every day in workplaces across the globe.
Myth:	Enduring bullying will make the target stronger.
Fact:	Bullying has devastating effects on targets, bystanders, families, friends, communities, organizations and society.
Myth:	Bullying is just a normal part of the workplace.
Fact:	Bullying is a violation of the most fundamental of human rights, it has no place and no value in the workplace.
Myth:	Targets are just whiners and weak.
Fact:	Targets are often the strongest people in a working environment. Targets come from all walks of life, all different positions in organizations.
Myth:	The U.S. legal system protects against workplace bullying.
Fact:	The U.S. legal system fails to address workplace bullying. There is no law that directly addresses workplace bullying and no tort action that effectively addresses workplace bullying.
Myth:	Laws to address workplace bullying would create a civility code.
Fact:	While there is nothing at all wrong with a civil workplace, statutes against workplace bullying do not create such a code, instead they protect employees’ rights in the workplace.

These as well as other myths about workplace bullying will be addressed throughout this book. In the first section of this book, I hope to provide the reader with a better understanding of workplace bullying. I provide the reader with an introduction to workplace bullying and some of the research in workplace bullying in the opening chapter. In Chapter 2, I provide the reader with a description of workplace bullying and examples of workplace bullying tactics and behaviors. From there, in Chapter 3, I lay out the effects of workplace bullying on targets, witnesses, families, communities, society and the organizations themselves. Finally, in Chapter 4, I hope to give the reader a bit of understanding of the causes of workplace bullying by describing the life cycle of workplace bullying from my experiences as a researcher, manager, advocate and activist.

1 An introduction to bullying and its impact on workers and workplaces

Sara had been successful her entire career. She could not understand why at this point in her life she was facing bullying from her colleagues and her supervisor and felt like her career was on the line. As a professor, she was a prolific publisher, had won numerous teaching awards and served on more committees than any of her colleagues. However, she found all of her colleagues were ganging up on her, her dean had engaged in bullying her and pressuring her to make changes to her classes, including changing student grades in her classes, and now she was afraid her department would deny her tenure. She had approached her union leadership, but they refused to address any issue between union members. For Sara, the working environment became so bad it began to impact her health and she began to lose sleep and weight and began to feel tired and listless. She decided she would have to get out. For Sara, like so many other targets of bullying, her torment only ended when she left her employment.

Sara is definitely not alone in her story and her story is no longer unique. The reality is that even by conservative estimates, each and every day millions of Americans are bullied in the workplace. The reality in the American workplace is that the vast majority of workers will be exposed to workplace bullying in one way or another – as targets, witnesses or even as bullies. For the targets of workplace bullying and the witnesses to these actions, the results of the bullying can be devastating.

Targets of bullying are held hostage by their bullies. They are controlled, manipulated, exploited and tormented. Targets are marginalized and degraded and targets as well as bystanders are often frozen by fear. Targets are stripped of their esteem and their dignity. Targets often find themselves unable to concentrate, unable to work and unable to relate to others as a result of their bullying. Targets of workplace bullying suffer psychological distress and illnesses, and even physical illnesses, including high blood pressure and heart disease from the bullying at work. For some targets, the bullying has a violent end in death from these diseases, workplace violence, workplace homicide or suicide. Targets often see their relationships with family members and friends break down. Communities lose valuable members and contributors who have fallen victim to workplace bullies. Targets, their friends and families, their organizations and society as a whole all suffer as a result of bullying in the workplace.

For targets of workplace bullying, the bullying leads to loss of esteem, shaken confidence, it impacts their ability to work and their ability to function outside of work. For many targets, the bullying leads to long term psychological damage, and even physical illnesses. Many targets of bullying suffer from PTSD symptoms and even find themselves contemplating suicide or acts of workplace violence. According to Gardner and Johnson, “bullying causes stress-related illnesses that shatter many careers. Anxiety, stress and excessive worry head the list of health consequences for targets, thereby interfering with their ability to be productive at work.”¹ Keashley and Neuman found that “exposure to bullying is associated with heightened levels of anxiety, depression, burnout, frustration, helplessness, negative emotions such as anger, resentment and fear, difficulty concentrating, and lowered self-esteem and self-efficacy.”² Bullying has also has been linked to symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress syndrome, suicidal thoughts and attempts. There is also clear evidence that some victims of bullying end up committing suicide. According to Davenport and colleagues, “For the victim, death – through illness or suicide – may be the final chapter in the mobbing story.”³ Bullying may be “a more crippling and devastating problem for employees than all other work-related stress put together.”⁴ Further, many of these symptoms appear before the target even identifies their tormentors’ behavior as bullying.

These devastating outcomes are also extremely widespread. A Michigan study by Keashley and Jagatic found 59% of respondents had “experienced at least one type of emotionally abusive behavior at the hands of fellow workers.”⁵ An Australian study found the over 99.6% of research respondents in K12 had experienced workplace bullying and half of the respondents had experienced 32 or more bullying behaviors in the workplace.⁶ Hornstein suggests that 20% of the American workforce faces workplace abuse on a daily basis and 90% will face it at some point in their careers.⁷ Studies of workplace harassment indicate that the percentage of targets of the broader phenomena of bullying (which includes harassment) would be over 70%.⁸ When we step back and consider how many current American workers have experienced bullying during their careers the number is shocking – over 50 million by the most conservative of measures.⁹ This does not account for the underreporting of workplace bullying due to ineffective and under-inclusive measures and the ineffective self-report method which will be discussed later. Bullying occurs in all different workplaces and targets come from varied backgrounds, demographics, personalities, experiences, expertise, job ability and most every other trait or behavior. The reality is that any workplace and any worker are susceptible to bullying at almost any time. Further, the reality is that if you are in the American workforce and even if you just picked up this book by chance, you will in your career almost definitely be a party to workplace bullying – as a target, witness or even as a bully.

Bullies come in all shapes and sizes. In the United States, bullies are most often in formal positions of power in the U.S., but co-workers and even direct reports can engage in bullying. Bullies come from every demographic background imaginable – male, female, black, white, Asian, Native American, Hispanic, any age, color, religion and national origin. Bullies also engage in bullying in many different ways – from schoolyard type of threats, to ostracizing, teasing, withholding of information, or using company policies to torment their targets. While most bullies intentionally engage in bullying, for some they may not even realize their behaviors are bullying.

Bullies are not the only perpetrators in these behaviors. In order for bullying to occur, organizations must at a minimum fail to take steps to prevent these actions, but more often than not they create environments that allow, support or even promote workplace bullying. Many organizations protect the bully and even utilize the bullies’ abilities to control their targets. Bullies who are otherwise “top performers” are often praised and protected while their targets are blamed and marginalized. Other organizations provide tacit approval of these behaviors through inaction or a misunderstanding of bullying. Far too many organizations provide support and allow for bullying by standing in the way of laws that could help to prevent, detect, remedy and eliminate these behaviors in the workplace.

Society as a whole, while a victim of bullying, is also not without blame. We often times glorify bullies (just consider Hell’s Kitchen and The Apprentice and the behaviors of the main characters on each show and the marketing of these bullying behaviors). We also glorify or at least accept the behaviors that are so often bullying – extreme level of control over employees’ lives by employers, the exploitation of the workers, even the degrading of workers in the pursuit of profit. Too often we blame targets for their own torment (excusing bullying because the worker was lazy or unproductive or annoying or different) or we tell the target to toughen up – it is work after all and people who are working in today’s economy should just be “happy they have a job” (and rarely does it matter when today is or what the economy looks like to hear that phrase thrown around). Finally, it is the current social system that allows bullying to occur, targets to feel ashamed and prevents targets from having reasonable escape paths from their tormentors. We support systems that reward the opportunistic bullies and turn a blind eye towards the tormenting bully.

Despite the severity and the pervasiveness of workplace bullying, most targets have little or no recourse. Too often in today’s system of commerce targets are trapped in the bullying environment. They are unable to simply pick up and find another job. Further, if the bullying has crushed their esteem, they are less likely to be able to find other employment or even feel confident enough to search for other employment. Resiliency training is also not a viable solution. For targets of bullying, it is not an issue of toughening up. In fact, most of them are already tough and have endured a lot in their careers to become successful, success that is often stripped from them by the workplace bully. Organizations are more likely to exacerbate the problem than they are to lend any meaningful assistance to employees. There also is no right to legal recourse for targets of workplace bullying in the United States. The law provides protection against only the harshest forms of bullying where intent and psychological damages are both clear and severe, or where the target can prove that the bullying was based on a protected status under federal or state equal employment opportunity laws.

In my career as an academic, attorney, union leader and researcher over the past 20 years, I have seen workplace bullying destroy the careers and more importantly the lives of targets. I myself have also experienced workplace bullying as a target and experienced damage to my career and my life as a result of such bullying. I have also unfortunately seen workplace bullying become more and more prevalent in American workplaces. Perhaps because of this pervasiveness, bullying behaviors seem to be gaining acceptance. I hear workers and future workers accepting behaviors that would have been considered bullying less than a decade ago as just a “normal” part of work. I even hear career advisors tell these individuals that they should consider themselves “lucky just to have a job,” and in essence not to worry about these behaviors as they are “just a part of work.” Both of these outcomes are the result of workplace bullying being ignored for far too long. No human being should have to endure workplace bullying in order to earn a living. While there are clearly more books and articles addressing workplace bullying today than nearly two decades ago when I started my career in this area, there is still little that has been done to effectively address the problem of bullying in the American workplace. Rather than addressing the problems of workplace bullying, we hold onto mistaken beliefs that get in the way of addressing the problem.

We often mistakenly minimize the problem. We ignore how bullying in the workplace violates human rights and destroys the lives of targets and witnesses. We therefore fail to see the importance of addressing workplace bullying. This mistaken belief leaves targets on their own and casts doubts (unfounded doubts) on the need for meaningful legislation.

We mistake the causes of workplace bullying and rather than seeing bullying for what it is – a phenomena that is supported, promoted or at the very least allowed by employers. We continue to hang onto the mistaken belief that employers and employees alike are equally opposed to bullying in the workplace, and therefore solving the problem rests with enlightening employers – both in regards to the presence and the solutions for workplace bullying. This outlook on workplace bullying is damaging – it has allowed bullying to spread and in many of its forms to become an accepted part of the workplace. Rather than addressing workplace bullying, the vast majority of employers ignore the problem and legislators do likewise either via a desire to “support” these employers or due to the unfounded belief that the employers will address the issue.

We mistakenly see bullying as a merely a micro level or individual level problem. We fail to recognize how workplace bullying is a systemic, macro level problem that requires a macro level solution. Because we tend to focus on the target, the bully or the organization, we tend to focus on micro level solutions – self-help, employer programs or even counseling for specific bullies – that leave the majority of targets of bullying unprotected, or organizational level solutions that have simply not come to fruition. We oftentimes assume we have adequate employment laws and fail to recognize ho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface: protecting employees’ human rights
• Section 1 Understanding workplace bullying
• Section 2 Workplace bullying can be addressed but is not in the United States
• Section 3 Ending workplace bullying
• References
• Index