Freedom From Workplace Bullies Week: Sampling an all-star team of experts and advocates

This is Freedom From Workplace Bullies Week (Oct. 19-25), an annual observance championed by the Workplace Bullying Institute. You can go to WBI’s Freedom Week page, which includes a video welcome from Dr. Gary Namie and various resources.

Among the many positive developments of the past year was the creation of the U.S. Academy on Workplace Bullying, Mobbing, and Abuse, a team of leading authorities and advocates on workplace bullying and related subjects, jointly sponsored by WBI and the New Workplace Institute. Take a look at the roster of founding Academy Fellows. In addition, here’s a short sampling of activities of some of the Fellows during the past year:

• David Ballard, founding director of the American Psychological Association’s Center for Organizational Excellence, helped to facilitate the creation and launch of the Center’s resource page on workplace bullying, featuring an animated educational video and a rich list of resources. I was pleased to work with the Center on the development of this project, including the script for the video:

• Ellen Pinkos Cobb is the author of Bullying, Violence, Harassment, Discrimination and Stress: Emerging Workplace Health and Safety Issues, an annually updated compilation and guide on relevant laws around the world, as well as host of her newly launched Workplace Bullying Laws website.

• Maureen Duffy and Len Sperry celebrated the publication of their new Oxford University Press book, Overcoming Mobbing: A Recovery Guide for Workplace Aggression and Bullying.

• Jackie Gilbert, state coordinator of the Tennessee Healthy Workplace Advocates, was part of a working group that consulted with Tennessee legislators toward the enactment of a law directing a state commission to develop a model workplace bullying policy for public employers within the state. Her advocacy work was featured in this Shelbyville Times-Gazette article.
• Andrew Mitchell continued his important public education work as the host of the Stop Workplace Bullies Now! website and his accompanying online aggregator newspaper about workplace bullying.
• Mike Schlicht and Tom Witt are co-directors of the New York Healthy Workplace Advocates. During the 2013-14 New York legislative session, their group secured 20 state senators and 86 state assembly members as sponsors and co-sponsors of the Healthy Workplace Bill. They also secured some 30 Freedom From Workplace Bullies Week Proclamations from New York cities, boroughs, towns, villages, and counties (Pinterest link here).

• Greg Sorozan, NAGE union president and state co-coordinator of the Massachusetts Healthy Workplace Advocates, was featured in this Boston Globe article about efforts to enact the Healthy Workplace Bill in the Bay State. He also was interviewed at length about his anti-bullying work in a blog post.

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