December 10: It’s Human Rights Day

On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Article 23 pertains specifically to work:

•  (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
•  (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
•  (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
•  (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

We have made a lot of progress over the past 61 years, but these statements remain largely aspirational for millions of workers, both in the U.S. and globally.  Let us continue to work toward making them a reality.

Link to full text of the Universal Declaration: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

Last year, Phil Tajitsu Nash wrote a piece for Asian Week magazine, commending our work on workplace bullying as an affirmation of the mission of the Universal Declaration: http://www.asianweek.com/2008/12/10/human-rights-at-60/

Check out these blogs recognized by the ABA Journal

The ABA Journal, the American Bar Association membership magazine, highlights its 3rd annual “Blawg 100″ in the December issue.  Among the honorees are three on our blogroll.  Hat’s off to all three!

Mediation Channel (www.mediationchannel.com)

Connecticut Employment Law Blog (www.ctemploymentlawblog.com)

Delaware Employment Law (www.delawareemploymentlawblog.com)

Link to ABA Journal “Blawg 100″ article: http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/third_annual_aba_journal_blawg_100/

Websites of the Week: Two new sites about the Healthy Workplace Bill

Here are two new websites for those who want to learn more about, and advocate for, the Healthy Workplace Bill, the legislation I drafted that creates a legal claim for targets of severe workplace bullying and provides incentives for employers to act preventively and responsively toward bullying at work:

National Site — Healthy Workplace Bill (www.healthyworkplacebill.org)

This is the new website of the national legislative campaign, spearheaded by the Workplace Bullying Institute.  Here you’ll find information about Healthy Workplace Bill and the various state campaigns to enact it.

Massachusetts Site — Massachusetts Healthy Workplace Advocates (www.mahealthyworkplace.com)

As noted before on this blog, the Healthy Workplace Bill has been introduced in Massachusetts as Senate Bill No. 699 (Senator Joan Menard, lead sponsor) for the 2009/10 session.  Thanks to Deb Falzoi for her superb work in creating this site!

Massachusetts supporters of the HWB — Save the Dates — A legislative hearing for the bill will be held on Wednesday, January 27.  We also will be holding a meeting for supporters of the bill on Thursday, January 7.  Details to follow!

Shorter papers on workplace bullying, dignity at work, and related topics

I’ve posted some of my short papers that have accompanied various presentations to a site called Academia. There’s a lot of repetition among them in terms of content, especially on talks concerning workplace bullying.  However, some readers may find these papers useful.  Here is what I’ve posted so far:

Imagining the Good Workplace: It Starts with Individual Dignity (New Workplace Institute forum, 2007)

Potential Legal Protections and Liabilities for Workplace Bullying (New Workplace Institute publication, 2007)

Multidisciplinary Responses to Workplace Bullying: Systems, Synergy, and Sweat (International Conference on Workplace Bullying, 2008)

Workplace Bullying and Employment Law (Massachusetts Bar Association, 2009; emphasizes Massachusetts law)

Necessary Remedy: Injecting Therapeutic Jurisprudence into American Employment Law (Congress of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health, 2009)

Is There a “Business Case” for Workplace Bullying Legislation? (Work, Stress, and Health Conference, 2009)

The Role of Labor Unions and Collective Bargaining in Combating Workplace Bullying (Work, Stress, and Health Conference, 2009)

For freely downloadable copies of these papers, go to: http://suffolk.academia.edu/DavidYamada/Papers

Swedish study: When men bottle up anger at work, heart attack risk doubles

Not exactly the news I want to post a day before America’s Thanksgiving Day, but alas, this study speaks for itself:

Men who bottle up their anger over unfair treatment at work could be hurting their hearts, a new Swedish study indicates.

Men who consistently failed to express their resentment over conflicts with a fellow worker or supervisor were more than twice as likely to have a heart attack or die of heart disease as those who vented their anger, claims a report in the Nov. 24 online edition of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

In fact, ignoring an ongoing work-related conflict was associated with a tripled risk of heart attack or coronary death, the study of almost 2,800 Swedish working men found.

I’m going to be writing more about the links between psychologically unhealthy workplaces and the risk of cardiovascular disease, but for now let me say that none of this surprises me.   We need to change our workplaces so that people feel free to express their concerns at work amidst a fair-minded, responsive institutional culture.  Our employee policies should embrace this, and our employment laws should protect responsible, non-disruptive speech at work.

Here’s the full article, with Ed Edelson reporting for HealthDay News, via Yahoo!: http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/stifledangeratworkdoublesmensriskforheartattack

The legality and ethics of volunteer internships

A lot of people are working for free these days.  Many are students who are securing unpaid internships as a possible investment in a future career.  Others are unemployed and want to gain experience and contacts, so they are volunteering their time and talent.   They are heeding advice by career counselors and columnists to offer to work without pay as a way of opening doors to new jobs and careers.

From a practical standpoint, I don’t blame anyone for using the internship/volunteer route to enter or re-enter the workforce, especially in today’s difficult economy.  As an educator, I have given that advice many times to students and recent graduates.  But I do so with ambivalence.  Something is very wrong with our economic system when those who provide genuine labor are not compensated for their work.  While I can understand public and non-profit employers having to rely on unpaid interns, it is wrong when profit-making enterprises do not pay at least the minimum wage.

In addition, it’s very likely that many of these arrangements — especially the common practice of unpaid internships — violate minimum wage laws.  The Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal wage and hour statute, does allow exemptions to the minimum wage for those who meet “trainee” status.  However, one of the requirements for trainee status is that the employer “derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees or students, and on occasion his/her operations may actually be impeded.”  This is an awfully tough standard to meet.  Most interns provide an “immediate advantage” to the employer, even if the work involves relatively unskilled labor.

It’s not necessarily the small “mom & pop” businesses that are stiffing their interns.  Several years ago, in researching a law review article on the rights of student interns (see link below), I was stunned to learn that as of 2000, employers such the ACLU, Brookings Institution, CNN, Merrill Lynch, MTV, Rolling Stone magazine, Sotheby’s auction house, and the White House were among the prestigious and presumably well-financed entities whose internship programs provided no compensation.  Hopefully that has changed, but even so, today there is no shortage of other employers who happily accept free labor.

We have become so accustomed to unpaid internships as a rite of passage that we ignore the significant social and economic class implications.  Fields such as journalism (print and electronic), politics, and the arts are infamous for offering unpaid internships.  It means that these opportunities are disproportionately limited to those who can afford to work for free. 

I am skeptical that there will be any hue and cry against this widespread practice.  For students, volunteer internships have become very much a part of the educational and credentialing experience, and now many unemployed folks are joining the fray.  But is the minimum wage really too much to ask for anyone who is providing genuine work contributions to an employer?

For a freely downloadable pdf copy of my law review article, The Employment Law Rights of Student Interns (Connecticut Law Review, 2002): http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1303705

Workplace bullying and American employment law: The state of research, education, and advocacy

I have posted an early draft version of a forthcoming law review article, “Workplace Bullying and American Employment Law: A Ten-Year Progress Report and Assessment,” which will appear in a symposium collection in the Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal, published by the University of Illinois College of Law.  Here’s an abstract of the article:

This article details the early history of efforts to make American employment law more responsive to workplace bullying, covering a period roughly from 2000 to the present day, with much of the commentary grounded in the author’s personal involvement in these initiatives.  It starts by examining research, education, and advocacy efforts concerning workplace bullying and its legal implications.  It then explains the major provisions of the latest version of the Healthy Workplace Bill, model anti-bullying legislation drafted by this author that has been the basis of bills introduced in over a dozen states legislatures since 2003.  The article closes with an assessment of the future of legal and policy initiatives to protect workers against severe workplace bullying in the United States.

As law review articles go, it’s relatively short and attempts to cover a lot of ground.  It’s the most complete summary of legal and policy initiatives related to workplace bullying in the U.S.  The article still needs to go through the journal’s editing process, but the information contained in it should be useful to anyone who wants to know what progress has been made during the past decade and where we have to go from here.

Link to freely downloadable pdf of the article: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1507950

The Role of Unions and Collective Bargaining in Combating Workplace Bullying

Organized labor can play an influential role in preventing and responding to workplace bullying, both as a safeguarding presence for workers and as a political and social force for positive change.  For many years, I have regarded that role as one of unrealized potential.  But recent developments give me considerable hope of ongoing partnerships with unions to address workplace bullying.  In particular, more unions are getting behind the Healthy Workplace Bill, anti-bullying legislation that I authored to fill a significant gap in worker protections. 

The Potential Role of Organized Labor to Combat Workplace Bullying

Unions can play an important role in preventing and responding to workplace bullying in at least four ways:

• Negotiate CBA Provisions — Unions should bargain for collective bargaining agreement provisions that protect their members against abusive supervision.

• Use Existing Contract Provisions — Even in the absence of specific protections against abusive supervision, the general substantive and procedural rights in an agreement may provide legal protections for a bullied union member.

• Educate Members and Resolve Disputes – Effective shop stewards can be trained to help to identify and resolve bullying situations, including those between union members.  Unions can encourage a culture of safety and respect among their members.

• Support Legal Reform – Unions can back the enactment of anti-bullying legislation such as the Healthy Workplace Bill.

A Presentation with Coattails

Here in Massachusetts, I have been delighted over an unfolding collaboration that grew out of a presentation I gave in November 2007 to an assembly of several hundred Massachusetts union activists affiliated with the Service Employees Union International (SEIU) and the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE).  I closed my talk by urging them to inject concerns about workplace bullying and abusive supervision into their contract negotiations.

A few months later, Greg Sorozan, president of one of the union locals and a national vice president of NAGE, informed me that as a follow up to that talk, all of the union locals affiliated with SEIU and NAGE were now bargaining over concerns about workplace bullying in their contract negotiations.  In January 2009, Greg reported that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had agreed to include a “mutual respect” provision in their new contract that covered, among other things, bullying and abusive supervision.  As a result, some 21,000 state workers are covered by a collective bargaining agreement that includes a workplace bullying provision.

This “mutual respect” provision is believed to be one of the first major American collective bargaining agreements to include express protections against bullying at work.  It isn’t perfect:  An alleged violation of the provision may be grieved, but it may not proceed to arbitration.  This is a real limitation; it means that unresolved bullying charges will not proceed to arbitration, thus precluding a worker from obtaining an enforceable order to stop the behavior or to make an award.  Nevertheless, it is a huge step forward to have a collective bargaining agreement that covers bullying and allows grievances to be filed when the behavior arises.

But wait, there’s more!  Greg also joined a working group to lobby for introduction and passage of the Healthy Workplace Bill.  He assigned the union’s lobbyist to seek a sponsor in the Massachusetts legislature, and the result was that the State Senate assistant majority leader, Senator Joan Menard, agreed to be the lead sponsor.  The bill is filed for the 2009-2010 session of the legislature as Senate Bill No. 699.

In sum, the promise of the labor movement rising up against workplace bullying is starting to become a reality.  Let us hope this trend continues.

Previous post on Labor Notes report: Bullying and harassment of rank-and-file workers is on the upswing during this recession.  See  http://newworkplace.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/management-harassment-and-bullying-up-reports-labor-notes/.

 Collective bargaining language: Unions that are interested in bargaining over an abusive supervision provision are invited to contact me at dyamada@suffolk.edu for suggested contract language.  Please include your affiliation and other verifiable contact information.

Healthy Workplace Bill:  The Healthy Workplace Bill provides a legal claim for severely bullied workers who can prove they were harmed by malicious behavior at work.  It also provides legal incentives for employers to act preventively and responsively toward workplace bullying and includes provisions that discourage weak and frivolous lawsuits.  For more information about efforts to enact the Healthy Workplace Bill, visit http://www.workplacebullyinglaw.org.

For more about the Healthy Workplace Bill in Massachusetts: http://www.mahealthyworkplace.com/

Delaware Woman Files Workplace Bullying Complaint

CBS News in Philadelphia reports on Carol Castillo, a former USA 3000 flight attendant, who has filed a complaint with the Philadelphia Human Rights Commission saying she was severely bullied at work:

You think of bullying in a schoolyard. But what about at work?

A Delaware woman says she has been the victim of tormenting at work. The taunt? That she really is a man. Now she has filed complaints with the city and state, saying it was illegal. Dave Huddleston has the story.

…Carol was a Philadelphia-based flight attendant for USA 3000. Among the comments Carol said she heard: A first officer said she looked like a man. Another flight attendant said there was a penis sticking out of Carol’s skirt. A pilot said Carol was “growing a beard.”

Because direct legal protections against workplace bullying are so few and far between, it appears that this claim has been legally framed as a sexual harassment complaint grounded in bullying-type behaviors.

Link to full CBS story: http://cbs3.com/local/bullying.delaware.workplace.2.1304734.html

Hat tip: Carol Arao, California Healthy Workplace Advocates

From Work, Stress, and Health 2009: Is there a “business case” for workplace bullying legislation?

During one of today’s sessions at the 2009 Work, Stress, and Health conference, I presented a short paper titled Is There a “Business Case” for Workplace Bullying Legislation?  I offered four basic propositions:

1.  From an employer’s standpoint, there is a strong business case for taking workplace bullying seriously as an employment relations problem.  Mounting evidence indicates that workplace bullying results in reduced productivity and employee loyalty, increased absenteeism and related costs, increased attrition and related costs, and greater risk of employee lawsuits even in the absence of a workplace bullying law.

2.  From an employer’s standpoint, workplace bullying legislation creates undesirable liability exposure.  Enactment of bullying legislation would indeed increase employer costs for defending and preventing lawsuits.

3.  Nevertheless, absent significant liability exposure, few employers take workplace bullying seriously.  Few employers voluntarily provide enforceable protections against bullying to their employees.  In the 2007 Workplace Bullying Institute/Zogby public opinion survey on workplace bullying, respondents reported that when employers were made aware of alleged bullying behaviors, 62 percent either ignored the problem or made it worse.

In addition, recent history is rife with examples of how employers have been complicit in blatant, brazen worker mistreatment in the absence of liability exposure: Racial discrimination, sexual harassment, and retaliation for whistle blowing are but a few examples.

4.  Advocates for legal reform must build a civil rights case positing that workplace bullying is a malicious violation of human dignity that denies people a right to earn a living free of psychological abuse.  Workplace bullying threatens mental health, physical health, personal and family relationships, careers, and livelihoods.  No other such common and destructive form of worker mistreatment so escapes the protective reach of modern American employment law.

The Healthy Workplace Bill, model anti-bullying legislation that I authored, provides severely bullied employees with a legal claim for malicious harm. It also provides incentives for employers to act preventively and responsively toward workplace bullying and includes provisions that preclude or discourage frivolous litigation.

To get involved in efforts to enact the Healthy Workplace Bill, go to: http://workplacebullyinglaw.org/.