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As the father of a toddler, he understood all about tantrums. The name-calling, the thrown objects, the worked-up accusations that made no logical sense.
The trouble is, these tantrums were not coming from his child, but a co-worker.
Now, to make matters worse, she’d begun emailing her taunts about his work, to everyone in the building. She even posted nasty comments about his teaching style on her blog. People were starting to look strangely at him.
“Mobbing,” psychological harassment, whatever you call it, the fact is bullying is on the rise in the workplace, including the halls of academe. It may be relatively easy to spot overt bullying like the kind described above. But the subtler harassment of behind-the-back smear campaigns, disparaging looks and condescending tone aren’t as easy to pin down, or prove, for that matter. Yet all bullying can be devastating.
“Bullying in the workplace in one form or another has always existed. Since the 1990s, however, the frequency, intensity and psychopathological consequences of bullying in the workplace have reached alarming proportions,” says Angelo Soares, a sociologist in the Department of Organisations and Human Resources at the University of Quebec in Montreal.
Soares, who studies bullying and speaks widely on the issue, notes there is no universal definition, but says most experts agree on three elements: the recurring and persistent nature of the action, the harmful, even devastating, effects on the person being targeted, and the focus of the definition on the effects suffered by the targeted individual and not on the intentions of the aggressor.
Bullies take several common routes in their “attempt to get a wanted reaction,” which Soares says is the goal of every bully. “They want to frustrate, torment. Bullying attacks the dignity of the person.”
Bullies:
• Isolate. They will try to make other workers stop communicating with the victim
• Erode social support. They do not include victims at work meetings, and extend that ban to social or after-work settings if they can
• Attack personal reputations. They gossip, ridicule and discredit the victim as a person
• Discredit work skills and competence. Sometime they assign meaningless, trivial tasks to an over-qualified victim. Sometime they expect impossible results, or assign work unrelated to the expertise of the victim
• Imperil physical health by assigning jobs that don’t take into account the physical health or limitations of the victim.
Bullying is the “sum of how all the actions add up,” according to Soares. “There is no expert agreement on how long it has to continue to constitute bullying, but the point is that it’s a dynamic form of violence, lasting in duration and frequency.”
Victims of bullying frequently suffer from depression, perform poorly at work, or cease to function at all, and in the worst cases, have physically attacked their tormentors, or taken their own lives.
“Bullying at work represents a significant threat and can have devastating effects on the mental health of workers,” Soares states in one study.
The law surrounding bullying in Canada is extremely complex, varying from province to province and on the nuances of each individual case.
Legally distinct from sexual harassment, the psychological harassment key to the notion of bullying is not included under the umbrella of banned behavior typically found in human rights legislation.
In 2004, Quebec became the first North American jurisdiction to explicitly outlaw bullying at work. “Psychological harassment” is defined under that law as “any vexatious behavior in the form of repeated and hostile or unwanted conduct, verbal comments, actions or gestures, that affects an employee’s dignity or psychological or physical integrity and that results in a harmful work environment for the employee.”
Since then, Saskatchewan has amended the definition of “harassment” under its Occupational Health and Safety Act, to include “any inappropriate conduct, comment, display, action or gesture by a person that…adversely affects the worker’s psychological or physical well-being and that the person knows or ought reasonably to know would cause a worker to be humiliated or intimidated, and that constitutes a threat to the health or safety of the worker.”
The legislation also states that for any action to constitute psychological harassment, “repeated conduct, comments displays, actions or gestures must be established,” or, that “a single, serious occurrence of conduct, or a single, serious comment, display, action or gesture, that has a lasting, harmful effect on the worker must be established.”
In other provinces, the bullied must navigate a sometime convoluted patchwork of remedies, including the filing of grievances pursuant to collective agreements and provincial labour laws, and civil lawsuits.
More and more, Canadian civil court cases involving bullying are sending shock waves through the boardrooms of corporate head offices and pocketbooks of employers who look the other way when bosses push around subordinates, or even when workers of more-or-less equal rank bully one another.
In a 2006 British Columbia case, Nancy Sulz won close to $1-million when her RCMP boss bullied her to the point of illness. The seminal Sulz case, and a string of others, are bringing the point home loud and clear that employers had better take counter action to bullying.
But perhaps the stickiest bullying situation involves two or more colleagues of relatively “equal” seniority or rank. In some environments, workers can file complaints through the equity or harassment office of the employer. Depending on the results of the investigation, the employer may act to redress the bullying.
And a unionized victim may choose to grieve an employer who refuses to take action against bullying.
But while these paths are open, they may not be so easy to tread, especially in an academic setting, where the right to openly and thoroughly debate differing points of view is often raised as a defense when co-workers claim they are being bullied. However, Soares disagrees that any definition of academic freedom can include or justify bullying.
“The right to academic freedom doesn’t imply a right to lack of respect or lack of social skills. We have the freedom to study, teach and publish,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I can mistreat my students. I don’t have the right to slap anyone because I have academic freedom. Nor do I have the right to humiliate, or talk in a way that is inappropriate in terms of respect or politeness.”
“Screaming is not acceptable,” Soares says, no matter how spirited a debater you may be.
If you feel you are being bullied, he recommends dealing with the problem by taking detailed notes soon after the event, which should include:
• What happened
• How it made you feel
• How you answered or responded to the bully
• Names of witnesses, if any
As well, it is important to remind yourself that the bullying is not your fault. Soares says victims should not confront bullies, unless they are very sure they are capable of remaining calm. If you belong to a union, tell your representative. If you aren’t unionized, request a meeting with your supervisor to discuss the problem.
If your supervisor is the bully, go above him or her. Always make it clear you expect action to deter the bullying.
Soares also recommends remaining calm during the act of bullying. “If you can remain polite, and it’s not easy, then do so. It is disappointing for a bully when his victim doesn’t react as he wants.”
Remaining calm and polite means you aren’t “playing the game,” according to the rules the bully is attempting to make you play by. “It’s really difficult to be mean to someone who continues to react politely,” Soares says. “It causes a cognitive dissonance in the bully’s mind.”
The fact that growing numbers of people are willing to talk about bullying and bring the issue out into the open is good, he adds. Believe it or not, many bullies aren’t aware of the effect they have on their victims. “Workplace education is critical in bringing self-awareness to these types,” Soares concludes. |
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