overview
schools
workplace
cases
elsewhere
related
Guides:
censorship
security
& infocrime
related
Profiles:
messaging
defamation
stalking
suicide
blogging
|
workplace
This page considers cyberbullying in the workplace.
It covers -
introduction
Bullying of colleagues and subordinates predates the web,
the steam engine and the printing press. It is evident
in pharaonic Egypt and in classical Rome. Robert Darnton's
The Great Cat Massacre (New York: Basic Books
1984) describes angry French apprentices on the loose
in the 1730s. George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris
and London (1933) features misery in the service
industries that is echoed in White Slave: The Godfather
of Modern Cooking (London: Orion 2006) by Marco White
and Kitchen Confidential (New York: HarperCollins
2001) by Anthony Bourdain.
In contemporary society it is evident in all types of
organisations, including police and military forces, universities,
religious orders, philanthropic and advocacy bodies, government
agencies and businesses.
It may centre on recruits - people who are younger, less
experienced, have a lower status and are less likely to
complain (or merely be heard if they complain). It may
instead involve the 'boss from hell' or what one of our
contacts described as the "cow in the next cubicle",
with bullying directed at peers rather than subordinates,
people with experience rather than novices.
Misbehaviour in workplaces may be ongoing or may be generational,
with 'juniors' undergoing ill-treatment as part of initiation
ceremonies and training, often going on to inflict the
same rite of passage on the next cohort of recruits. It
may involve a group or targeting of an isolated individual.
Many organisations have recognised the undesirability
of bullying, on the basis of -
- disrespect
for human rights
- breach
of equal opportunity, workplace safety, crimes and other
legislation
- exposure
to litigation regarding physical and psychological injury
- potential
erosion of a corporate profile through negative publicity
- the
waste of resources implicit in not using people to their
full potential (and in addressing litigation, resignation
or other responses by those who have been bullied).
It
is clear that some organisations, including bodies in
Australia that espouse a commitment to best practice regarding
human resource management and human rights, have articulated
antibullying principles and protocols but have failed
to effectively implement such policies.
business
[under development]
government
Government agencies are organisations and are therefore
not free of bullying, despite notions that an emphasis
on exemplary human resource practice and the availability
of grievance resolution or whistleblowing
mechanisms will minimise malpractice.
One report for example suggests that 17% of Australian
federal government employees report that they are or have
been bullied during the course of their official employment,
a strikingly higher percentage that the <1% assumed
by senior executives. The size of the figure - consistent
with data from comparable overseas governments - may reflect
definitional problems or may instead reflect perceptions
among the bullied that they can speak out, in contrast
to the 'grit your teeth and bear it' ethos evident in
most military organisations.
military
What has been labelled 'bastardisation', bullying, initiation
or harassment of members of the armed forces remains an
issue in all nations, although some regimes are substantially
worse than others.
The 1998 Grey Review for example exposed endemic harassment
at the Australian Defence Force Academy, the training
institution for the nation's military elite. The Review
followed exposes of poor practice at sister institution
Duntroon in 1969. In 2007 Chief of Defence Force Air Chief
Marshal Angus Houston, in responding to a Senate committee's
criticism of harassment of trainees, commented that "any
form of behaviour that is designed to humiliate, bastardise,
bully our people is totally unacceptable to me".
One might ask why hazing has continued to occur, despite
such protestations from a succession of Houston's predecessors.
One answer might be found overseas: cruelty is traditional
and is integral to some corporate cultures that prize
physical strength, disregard of pain and unthinking respect
for hierarchy. The report
of the Deepcut Review in the UK indicated that commitments
had not been communicated throughout the armed forces
or were simply being ignored by several levels of the
hierarchy.
In an internal British Army survey in 2003, for example,
43% of a sample of 2,000 soldiers responded that bullying
was a problem. 5% reported that they were victims. A 20
year old private in an infantry regiment testified that
his initiation consisted of being burned on the genitals,
rectally penetrated with a broomstick, forced to march
with string tied to his genitals and ankles and dropped
from a window.
Bullying of recruits (and harassment of female personnel)
in the US has gained similar attention, with suggestions
that a formal 'zero-tolerance' policy regarding violent
initiation ceremonies is often ignored in practice. The
1990s saw debate after claims that molestation of female
airforce personnel had been covered up and after broadcast
of video that showed marines hammering metal badges into
the chests of parachute school graduates (aka blood-winging).
Conditions are worse in regimes with a recent totalitarian
history. Human Rights Watch, in its 2004 The Wrongs
of Passage study,
for example highlighted systemic and "horrific violence"
against new conscripts in the Russian army - something
that "has not only continued since Soviet times,
but has become harsher" and is not being strongly
addressed by Russia's leadership. HRW claims that hundreds
of conscripts are killed or commit suicide as a result,
thousands desert, thousands are physically and or mentally
scarred by the ritual of dedovshchina (aka 'Rule of the
Grandfathers').
not for profit sector
Bullying is not restricted to commercial entities or schoolyards:
observers have commented that some of the nastiest mobbing
and victimisation by individuals involves higher education,
arts and philanthropic institutions.
online
Unsurprisingly, digital bullying in the workplace does
not differ enormously from nastiness in the playground.
It represents an extension of traditional workplace bullying
rather than some that is qualitatively different in terms
of motivation or impact.
Reports on particular incidents thus encompass -
- identifiable
or pseudonymous email and SMS communications to an individual's
work phone or email address (or to a private address/phone)
that feature personal threats or dismissive comments
- communications
that feature offensive content such as erotic images
or jokes about ethnicity, religious affiliation or sexual
preference
- messages
that are ostensibly aimed at correcting an individual
or providing feedback but are copied to a group and
thus have the effect of publicly shaming or denigrating
the person
- negative
characterisations of the individual on workplace blogs
and personal blogs
- use
of email and SMS to load the individual or a group with
additional tasks, often frivolous and often out of work
hours, reducing the recipient's personal time and eroding
the recipient's autonomy (as they are 'on call' 24/7)
- sharing
of images that have been manipulated to depict an individual
in a way that is humiliating or otherwise offensive,
eg where an image of person's face has been pasted into
a pornographic image or where a portrait has been decorated
with a dunce's cap, a noose or a swastika
- display
of screensavers that feature offensive content, the
digital equivalent of the 'girlie calendar' or pin-up
encountered in many macho environments (auto workshops,
financial trading floors) prior to anti-discrimination
legislation.
remedies
Legal remedies in Australia have included action under
-
- Anti-Discrimination
Legislation
-
Common Law
-
Constructive Dismissal Law
-
Occupational Health & Safety Law
- Workers
Compensation schemes
-
Criminal Law
As
the following pages indicate, those remedies reflect expectations
about individual responsibilities and restrictions on
things such as assault and workplace discrimination. Setting
fire to an apprentice as part of hazing or leaving pork
chops in a Muslim colleague's locker is frowned on; physical
injury may be rewarded by criminal sanctions against the
perpetrator.
They also reflect expectations about duties of care and
recognition that employers may be in a position to prevent
particular abuses or track malpractice (for example articulate
and implement a policy that prohibits use of a corporate
network for sending/receiving obscene, defamatory or threatening
content).
studies
The literature on workplace bullying, variously defined,
is extensive but often inward-looking and even polemical.
Items of particular interest include Maryam Omari's 2006
'The Public Sector: An Environment Prone To Bullying?'
in 1 Public Policy 2, Safeguarding the Organisation
Against Violence & Bullying: An International Perspective
(Basingstoke: Palgrame Macmillan 2004) edited by Paul
McCarthy & Claire Mayhew; Bullying From Backyard
To Boardroom (Leichhardt: Federation Press 2001)
edited by Paul McCarthy & Jane Rylance; Workplace
Bullying: What we know, who is to blame and what we can
do (London: Taylor & Francis 2002) by Charlotte
Rayner, Helge Hoel & Cary Cooper; Mobbing: Emotional
Abuse in the American Workplace (Ames: Civil Society
2002) by Noa Davenport, Ruth Schwartz & Gail Elliott;
Bullying & Emotional Abuse in the Workplace: International
Perspectives on Research & Practice (London:
Taylor & Francis 2003) by Stale Einarsen, Helge Hoel,
Dieter Zapf & Cary Cooper; and Workplace Mobbing
in Academe: Reports from Twenty Universities (Lewiston:
Edward Mellen 2005) edited by Kenneth Westhues; Bullying
at Work: How to Confront and Overcome It (London:
Virago 1992) by Andrea Adams and Adult Bullying: Perpetrators
and Victims (London: Routledge 1997) by Peter Randall.
For an introduction to Australian criminal and civil law
see Principles of Criminal Law (Pyrmont: Lawbook
Co 2005) by Simon Bronitt & Bernadette McSherry and
Law of Torts (Chatswood: LexisNexis Butterworths
2004) by Rosalie Balkin & J Davis. Perspectives are
offered in Des Butler's Damages for Psychiatric Injury
(Leichhardt: Federation Press 2004) and his Employer
Liability for Workplace Trauma (Aldershott: Ashgate
Press 2002).
next page (cases)
|
|
