By Penny Stevens, The Sydney Morning Herald

A court decision yesterday to issue $335,000 in fines arising from workplace behaviour that resulted in a waitress committing suicide highlights the significant risks associated with bullying and harassment in the workplace.

The owner of Cafe Vamp in Hawthorn was one of four workers to plead guilty to failing to take reasonable care for the health and safety of persons.

The owner and his one-man company also pleaded guilty to failing to provide and maintain a safe working environment.

The company was fined $220,000, and magistrate Peter Lauritsen said he would have doubled the penalties had the defendants not pleaded guilty to what he described as ”the most serious case of bullying”.

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from The Southland Times

From the playground to the workplace, bullying is something that, unfortunately, some people never manage to outgrow, writes Mary-Jane Thomas in this week’s Work to Rule.

But proof for employees that they are the victims of bullying behaviour can be much harder than pointing to a black eye and a missing tooth.

Being legally undefined, “bullying” can encompass a vast, vague and complex array of psychological abuse, which can lead employees to their emotional breaking points or to stress-related breakdowns.

However, a 2007 report by the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University – “How to Bust the Office Bully: Eight Tactics for explaining Workplace Abuse to Decision Makers”, offers insight into how employees should approach their managers to give a credible, relevant and plausible account if they should become the victims of bullying on the job.

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from The Courier Mail

The parents of a waitress who killed herself after being subjected to relentless workplace bullying says the law should be changed to allow courts to jail tormenters.

Three workmates, and the owner of Cafe Vamp in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn, were convicted and fined a total of $335,000 following the death of waitress Brodie Rae Constance Panlock, 19, in September 2006.

Ms Panlock threw herself from the fourth floor of a car park in Hawthorn after enduring physical and mental bullying at the cafe where she had worked for 16 months.

She died three days later in hospital from her injuries.

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By Daniel Lombard, CommunityCare.co.uk

Councils have rejected a proposal from unions for a national register of violent incidents involving social care staff, arguing local reporting systems are the most effective solution. Unison, Aspect and the British Association of Social Workers are calling for more funding and national monitoring to tackle the “chronic problem” of violence and threats against practitioners.

Unlike the healthcare sector, there are no national or regional statistics on the number of attacks on social care staff in spite of the daily risks they face.

Roger Kline, social care spokesperson for Aspect, said a national register would enable research to identify common high risk situations and enable better planning to reduce risk in the future.

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By Adam Curtis, The Sierra Vista Herald

As the debate heats up on whether to allow guns on university and community college campuses, some students and faculty members at University of Arizona South shared their thoughts Wednesday.

Associated Students of the University of Arizona South have not researched or discussed the issue enough to take an official stance, President Andrés Gabaldón said. “But personally, I don’t think guns solve any problems in our society.”

Speaking only as an individual student, Gabaldón would not feel safer knowing faculty members with permits could carry concealed weapons, he said. “I have been seeing a trend for more guns in more places within our society, and to bring them into an academic setting, I don’t think that’s the right choice.

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Press Release from Earth Times

In theory, science research laboratories are always peaceful places, where pure knowledge is being pursued. However, in recent years some tragic episodes of workplace violence have disturbed this tranquility. Principal Investigators have had to become more alert to head off these distressing, though uncommon, possibilities.

Among recent tragedies in the news this past year have been the shootings by a psychiatrist at Ft. Hood, the lab murder of a researcher at Yale, and the mysterious episode of contamination of lab coffee at Harvard. The Pentagon Report on the shooting incident concluded there were numerous warning signs which had been ignored.

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from news.com.au

More than half of nurses are attacked while tending to patients and more than 90 per cent are verbally abused, a report has found.

The report also says most nurses fail to formally disclose the incidents because they believe violence and abuse come with the job.

A study of 113 nurses, published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing, shows three-quarters of those providing private and public care suffer workplace violence.

But research team leader Rose Chapman, from Perth’s Curtin University of Technology, said only one in six incidents were taken further because many nurses felt workplace violence “was just part of the job”.

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By Ronald E. Riggio, Psychology Today

What happens when a schoolyard bully grows up and enters the workforce? Or worse, what if that bully becomes your boss? The result can be outright aggressive behavior or a subtle psychological torture that can make the workplace a living hell.

Someone close to me is experiencing a horrible case of psychological bullying at work. In her case, the main bully is a supervisor, but the supervisor has created an “inner circle” that helps in applying the bullying tactics. Her story caused me to look back on other cases of bullying at work that I have encountered. Unfortunately, there have been far too many.

Workplace bullying is more common than you might expect. A 2007 Zogby survey found that 37% of workers – representing 54 million people — reported that they had been bullied at work. Some researchers have reported that workplace bullying is a greater problem than sexual harassment.

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By Susan Gilmore, The Seattle Times

The slayings of six police officers last year caused the number of deaths due to workplace violence in Washington state to rise to its highest level in more than a decade.

According to the state Department of Labor and Industries, there were 13 on-the-job homicides last year in the state, which includes the six police officers as well as seven suicides. In addition to the police officers, the deaths included retail clerks, a taxi driver, a musician and an armored-car driver.

The next highest year for work-place homicides was 2004, with 11.

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