Workplace Violence Provisions in Private Sector Collective Bargaining Agreements

from the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics

Although violent acts perpetrated against employees at work are a major cause of workplace mortality, research reveals a relative absence of collective bargaining provisions dealing with workplace violence.

Violent acts perpetrated against employees at work are a major cause of workplace mortality. In 1997, 856 homicides and 212 suicides occurred at work. Combined, these violent acts constituted the major cause of work-related deaths. In addition to being a humanitarian concern, violent acts are a major cost for employers. One study estimates that workplace violence costs employers between $6.4 and $36 billion in lost productivity, diminished public image, insurance expenses, increased security, and other related factors.

Homicide is the second major cause of death at work for both men and women. It should be noted, however, that outsiders perpetrate most homicides in industries with direct public contact. This is reflected in occupations at high risk for violence such as employees and owners of small grocery and convenience stores, hotel clerks, gas station workers, law enforcement officers, and other publicly linked occupations.

Assaults are also a major problem in the workplace. In 1996, 18,592 nonfatal assaults occurred at work, resulting in injuries and illnesses with days away from work. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, during the 1992-96 period, 2 million people each year were the victims of violent crime or threatened by violent crime in the workplace. Included among these 2 million annual violent acts were 1.5 million simple assaults, 396,000 aggravated assaults, 84,000 robberies, and 51,000 rapes and sexual assaults. Approximately 12 percent of these violent acts resulted in personal injury to the victim and one-half of these necessitated medical treatment.

Workplace violence data do not include off-duty employees who are on their employers’ premises or non-employees who are victimized in the workplace. For example, the homicide of a customer during a store robbery (or an off-duty employee picking up a pay check) would not be counted as workplace violence.

Industry differences
The types and frequencies of violent acts at work differ among industries in the ratios of homicides and nonfatal assaults to employment levels.

These differences are highlighted in the following tabulation that presents ratios of violent acts to employment in 1997 for retail trade, manufacturing, and health service industries.

Employer and union involvement

Employers
The importance of workplace violence as a human resource issue has grown steadily over the past several years. Corporate security directors consider the prevention of workplace violence to be a highly important security issue. In 1997, workplace violence was the second ranked concern of security directors. For the period 1994-96, it was their top concern.

Human resource directors have not historically perceived workplace violence as a major area of concern. For example, in a 1993 survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, 71 percent of the respondents indicated their organization had neither policies nor procedures to respond to the possibility or effects of workplace violence.

Even in more recent surveys, workplace violence is not among the top 25 concerns they expect to face in 2005. However, a recent survey of human resource directors by Workforce9 found that human resource personnel are increasingly the targets of violence. The survey noted that 1 in 4 respondents experienced some form of violence at work and a majority felt the problem was getting worse. Human resources professionals are targeted for violence because of their involvement in developing and implementing policies that may motivate employee dissatisfaction — such as work schedules, layoffs, wages, career development, and perceived discriminatory practices.

Unions
Unions represented 15.6 percent of employed wage and salaried workers in 1997. Within industries, there were significant differences in the percent of employees represented by unions, ranging from 2.8 percent in the finance, insurance and real estate industry to 33.7 percent in the transportation equipment manufacturing industry. Union representation has been relatively low in industries with high frequencies of workplace violence. For example, unions represent 6.1 percent of the employees in retail trade, but as noted above, this industry accounts for 45.6 percent of the homicides. Also, unions represent 8.8 percent of health service workers, but, also as noted previously, 44.2 percent of all nonfatal assaults are perpetrated against workers in this industry.

Unions can make important contributions in efforts to prevent workplace violence. In most labor agreements, union and management are already committed to a safe work environment and the prevention of workplace violence would be a logical extension of this commitment to safety. Union representatives assist aggrieved employees who use organizational grievance procedures to seek redress of their dissatisfactions arising at work. Oftentimes, employees are agitated about the issue motivating them to file a grievance. In extreme situations, they may not wait until the eventual settlement of their grievance before they act out their frustrations in violent ways.13 If union representatives became part of the internal communication network to prevent workplace violence, they might see their responsibilities in a broader scope, including both protecting the rights of employees and preventing employee violence.

Also, employees often confide their dissatisfactions and feelings about organizational matters to union representatives.
These representatives are not expected to compromise confidential relations; however, they may be able to help agitated employees seek peaceful solutions to their grievances or treatment for personal problems that may be contributing to their animosity. Another reason to include union representation in violence prevention programs is because union disputes, particularly strikes, may result in violence or threats of violence.

Unions and management
Traditionally, unions and management have negotiated clauses in collective bargaining agreements on subjects affecting the safety and health of employees. Little is known, however, about the extent of such cooperation on the subject of workplace violence. What is known is that management has tended to treat certain subject areas, such as employee altercations, horseplay, abusive language, and other hostile actions, within the context of “employee discipline” and, as such, has tended to exclude union involvement in dealing with workplace violence. That alternative places unions in the position of becoming involved in workplace violence problems after employees complain of unfair treatment by management. From a practical standpoint, one justification for early union involvement in workplace violence is to look at what happens when these types of issues are taken to arbitration. According to a major study of these types of cases, arbitrators have overturned nearly 70 percent of disciplinary cases involving workplace violence. Union involvement in dealing with these issues up front might mean that fewer cases go to arbitration.

A few unions and employers have agreed to procedures to address workplace violence. The United Automobile Workers (UAW) and the Ford Motor Company agreed to develop teams to respond to violence occurring at the local level. However, the present collective bargaining agreement between Ford and the UAW, which expires September 14, 1999, does not contain any clauses on workplace violence.

In the public sector, the U.S. Postal Service and several postal unions have implemented programs to address workplace violence. Some public sector unions have called upon employers to establish workplace violence prevention policies and take other measures to make workplaces less violent.

In Canada, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents 410,000 employees, has achieved acceptance from employers to include clauses in collective bargaining agreements and to expand labor-management safety and health committees to cover workplace violence.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has sought to address violence in the workplace. Part of this initiative included developing a set of guidelines for health care and human service workers. In addition to a policy statement for the total organization, guidelines for the following were developed:
- Employee involvement
- Work site analysis
- Hazard control and prevention
- Employee training and education
- Record keeping and program evaluation

The OSHA guidelines are broad and encompass most points an organization might consider in attempting to prevent workplace violence. They provide a rationale for the inclusion of union representation in the prevention of workplace violence. Union involvement could be easily accomplished because joint labor-management safety committees already exist in many contracts and their duties could be broadened to include threat assessment.

The sample
The data used for this study of workplace violence provisions in collective bargaining agreements (covering 1,000 or more workers) are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) file of approximately 1,200 private-sector collective bargaining agreements. To obtain a contemporary perspective on how workplace violence issues are being formalized in collective bargaining agreements, only contracts expiring between September 1, 1997 and September 30, 2007 (the latest expiration date in the BLS file) were used.

Within this time interval there were 1,168 agreements covering 5.2 million employees. Of the 1,168 agreements, 14 contained one or more provisions involving workplace violence. The number of employees covered by each of the
14 agreements ranged from 975 to 34,100. The number of contracts in the research sample, by industry and covered employees, is shown in table 1. Also shown is the same information for the 14 contracts containing provisions on workplace violence.

Incidence of workplace violence clauses
Almost 70,000 workers were covered by the 14 agreements that contained at least 1 provision on the subject of workplace violence. As noted previously, in 1997, 45.6 percent of workplace homicides occurred in the retail trade industry. In that same year, 6.1 percent of the workers in that industry were covered by a collective bargaining agreement. There are 110 agreements in the BLS file, covering 684,532 workers in the retail trade industry. Only one of those agreements, however, has even a single clause on the subject of workplace violence.

Similarly, 44.2 percent of workplace nonfatal assaults occurred in the health services industry, where 8.8 percent of the workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements. Of the 35 agreements covering 141,284 health service workers, only 5 agreements covering 14,400 workers had at least one clause on the subject of workplace violence.

Workplace violence clauses
Twenty different clauses pertaining to workplace violence were identified in the 14 agreements that contained at least 1 workplace violence clause. These 20 clauses were grouped into 5 categories: Violence-free environment, prevention and security, prohibitions, labor-management safety and health committees, and responses to violence. The clauses by category, industry, and number and percent of employees covered are shown in table 2.

Violence-free environment
An important first step in preventing workplace violence is an unequivocal statement of the intention of the union and management to ensure that the workplace is violence free. Two types of clauses can accomplish this. The first would state the intention of the parties to agree that such an environment must be established and maintained. The second would state each employee’s responsibility toward achieving such an environment.

Violence-free workplace
Only one of the 14 agreements has a clause titled “Violence-free” and the language stipulates that the employer is responsible for ensuring employee safety in dangerous situations. Several other agreements mention the term violence-free within the context of other subjects, such as the responsibilities of employees to help achieve such an environment by obeying safety rules and being active in safety management through participation in safety and health committees.

Other agreements also use the term in clauses involving management procedures to assure employee safety while working alone in high-risk crime areas or other dangerous situations.

Employee responsibilities
Three agreements have clauses recognizing the importance of employee cooperation in preventing—and, if it should occur, stopping—workplace violence. Some clauses stipulate that employees and supervisors are encouraged and expected to help promote a violence free workplace. Some language includes the importance of work rules and rules of conduct to reinforce the expectation of non-violent behavior.

Employee cooperation in maintaining a non-violent workplace includes employee participation on committees dealing with the subject. They are also encouraged to report workplace hazards, crime, or behavior which might lead to violence, and to suggest methods for dealing with problems that arise. Employees are encouraged to avoid behavior that may lead to violence, to abusive or coercive language or actions, or to lewd or disrespectful comments to fellow employees and supervisors.

One agreement includes language under the subject of employee cooperation cautioning the importance of “refraining from the interference of others” on company property. In this situation “interference” was defined as physical contact or intimidating remarks or behavior, such as horseplay which could provoke violence. Under the subject of cooperation, one agreement includes union acknowledgment of its responsibility to report any sabotage or theft of equipment or property.

Prevention and security
As shown in table 2, the six types of clauses in the prevention and security category deal with ensuring personal safety, providing employee identification badges, protecting employees as they arrive at and leave work, aiding employees who have concerns about workplace violence, providing for employee assistance program involvement in preventing workplace violence, and safeguarding employees who work alone. No more than two contracts had clauses on any one of these six prevention and security subjects.

Ensuring personal safety
Two agreements had personal safety clauses. The provisions in these clauses addressed working alone in high-risk areas, assuring proper safety procedures are followed when dealing with potentially violent situations, and using appropriate entrances and exits. Also included under personal safety is contract language requiring employees to adhere to safety rules and procedures to prevent them from being victimized.

Providing employee identification badges
Only one agreement specifies the issuance of employee identification badges for the prevention of workplace violence. Employee personal identification security systems, such as identification or security cards, can be aids in the prevention of workplace violence by helping to prevent unauthorized personnel from gaining access to an employer’s premises. Usually the systems are used in conjunction with centralized employee entrances and exits.

Protecting employees arriving at, or leaving work
One contract had a provision requiring employers to provide protection for employees when they arrive at and leave work. This type of security may be provided in conjunction with centralized entrances and exits. Some employers provide escort services to parking areas. Some also restrict unauthorized persons from having access to parking areas or have closed-circuit television cameras in those areas.

Aiding employees with concerns about workplace violence
A key provision in protecting employees is giving special assistance to those who believe they are in danger. Providing an environment in which employees will report such conditions is an important first step. Two agreements have clauses in which the employer accepts responsibility to give special assistance to any employee who expresses concerns about his or her personal safety. The concerns can be motivated by circumstances such as a perceived hostile work environment, threats or physical action by fellow employees or supervisors, and actual criminal acts which occur at work.

The language in these clauses states that when an employee expresses reasonable concern for his or her personal safety, both the employer and the union recognize the importance of making a concerted effort to remove the cause of the problem.

Employee assistance programs
An important component for preventing workplace violence is early recognition of workers who are contemplating violent acts. An employee assistance program (EAP) provides resources and expertise to deal with employee problems. EAP counselors can help prevent workplace violence because they usually have special training in human behavior that aids them in identifying employees who potentially may be violent. In addition, counselors are expected to ask questions about clients’ personal lives including the problems they are experiencing at work and elsewhere.

They are also qualified to help troubled employees get assistance before they resort to violence. In view of the benefit counselors provide to a workplace violence prevention program, it was somewhat surprising that only two agreements had clauses providing for EAP involvement in helping to prevent workplace violence.

Safeguarding employees working alone
A high crime rate, the possibility of violence, an isolated area, and hazardous working conditions can all cause concern about working alone. Two agreements have clauses addressing employee vulnerability to criminal acts while working alone. The provisions in these clauses provide procedures for employees to report such conditions. In addition, they provide measures to monitor situations.

The clauses also provide that where it is perceived to be necessary for protection, additional employees or security personnel will be assigned to protect the concerned employee. The clauses also provide for an escort service to and from some locations because of the potential for violence to an employee.

Prohibitions
The most fundamental clauses affecting workplace violence are those prohibiting specific behaviors at work. The specific provisions in the contracts on this subject are prohibiting abusive language, hostile behavior, concealed weapons, sabotage, and contraband. Clauses addressing these types of prohibitions are the most frequently appearing ones in the 14 agreements.

Abusive language
Five of the 14 agreements have a provision prohibiting abusive language. The definitions in the contracts for abusive language include any language that is offensive to a coworker or supervisor. The wording ranges from language which implies harm to another (a threat) to language which shows an unacceptable reference to another (disrespect).

Hostile behavior
Six of the agreements have clauses prohibiting hostile behavior. The language in the agreements describing these prohibitions is not uniform. Generally, hostile behavior is defined as adverse physical activity, ranging from disrespectful behavior to threatening an assault. In several agreements the term was defined as physically assaulting another with intent to inflict physical injury. In other agreements, hostility included “horseplay” and physical activity that could lead to an adverse reaction from a coworker.

Concealed weapons
Two agreements have provisions prohibiting employees from bringing concealed weapons, firearms, and explosives onto the employers’ premises. One of the two agreements does permit possessing firearms on company property, with proper authorization, such as for a security guard.

Sabotage
Two agreements have contract provisions dealing with the prevention of sabotage by employees. The provision in one contract includes an agreement by the union to report any attempt to sabotage or damage company property by employees. The provision in the other agreement is in a section on rules governing employee conduct. This clause states any deliberate destructive acts to tools or equipment, such as damaging or destroying them, shall subject the employee to disciplinary action including immediate discharge.

Contraband
For many years a key component of security provisions was to prohibit drug use on company property. Employer-authorized inspections of employee lockers and items being carried through employment entrances were conducted to ensure a drug free environment. Only one agreement has a clause providing for the inspection of packages brought into the workplace by employees. One reason why other agreements do not contain clauses on this subject may be because unions and employees are highly resistant to “invasions of privacy.”

Labor-management committees
Labor-management committees can play an important role in the overall strategy to prevent workplace violence. These committees exist at the local, divisional, and national levels, depending upon the firm.

Involvement of safety and health committees
Three of the contracts have clauses providing for safety and health committee involvement in preventing workplace violence. The specific roles the committees have in preventing workplace violence were not explained in the clauses.

Research conducted on safety and health committees found that the responsibilities and the roles of these committees largely depend upon the organizational level at which they function. National committees usually are responsible for the overall assessment of the effectiveness of the education of employees on various topics (such as workplace violence issues), and the success of programs to reduce workplace violence. The primary mechanism for combating workplace violence is a comprehensive educational program focused on the causes of violence and the best approaches for dealing with problems that occur. The role of education should be to heighten workforce awareness of violence, engage employees in discussing ways to control or eliminate violent behavior, and to explain the role of counseling and the EAP in helping employees deal with their problems. In addition, managers should be encouraged to incorporate workplace violence issues into safety awareness sessions and to involve local safety and health committees when developing agendas to deal with these issues.

Local safety and health committees usually focus on procedures and issues at the local plant level, such as security concerns like increased lighting, fencing, and entrances and exits. These committees can also help prevent violence by training union personnel on how to assist employees who may act out their personal problems through workplace violence.

Developing committee agenda items on violence
Two agreements have clauses giving safety and health committees the responsibility to develop agenda items to address workplace violence.

Formulating proposals to stop violence
Only one agreement contained a provision for safety and health committees to formulate proposals to stop violence. This provision does not specify the types of proposals the committees should consider. Proposals could be initiated at both the local and national levels. The focus of local proposals could be on such subjects as maintaining a secure work environment, developing emergency response measures, developing lists of prohibited behaviors, and conducting training on how to recognize potentially violent situations. Proposals at the national level could focus on strategic issues, such as formulating national policy statements and establishing procedures to ensure compliance.

Responses to violence
A strategic plan to address workplace violence should include actions that are contemplated in response to violent incidents. Only one agreement had clauses addressing this important area. The four clauses contained in this agreement call for a trained response team, procedures to record violent incidents, provisions for counseling the victim(s), and providing the victim(s) with workers’ compensation benefits and paid time-off to recover from the incident.

Conclusions and recommendations
One of the most significant outcomes of this research was the discovery of the relative absence of contract provisions on workplace violence. It is recognized that much of this area is currently dealt with in the context of “rules of conduct” and is perceived as an exclusive management right. This lack of coverage in contract language speaks to the limited use of collective bargaining in preventing and controlling workplace violence.

Only 14 of the 1,168 contracts have provisions on workplace violence. The workers covered by these 14 agreements comprise about 1.5 percent of all the workers covered by the BLS contract file. The industry data also shows some interesting results. For example, almost half of all workplace homicides occur in retail trade, but only 1 of the 110 contracts in this industry has even a single provision on workplace violence. Similarly, the health services industry accounts for 44 percent of all nonfatal assaults, but only 5 of the 35 contracts studied have at least 1 clause dealing with workplace violence.

Even in the 14 contracts that have provisions on workplace violence, most deal with fewer than 5 subjects. These agreements are significantly lacking on the subject of responding to workplace violence. Only one agreement has any provisions for responding to workplace violence. The most frequently appearing topic among the 14 contracts was on the subject of prohibitions. Prohibiting hostile behavior, the most frequently mentioned subject, appeared in six agreements.

From these data one could conclude that negotiators in those organizations with the largest numbers of workers covered by unions have not formally addressed workplace violence. While workplace violence may be one of the top priorities among corporate security directors and a growing concern for human resource professionals, that concern is not evidenced in collective bargaining agreements covering 1,000 or more workers. On the positive side, 20 different subjects were identified in 5 categories that labor and management might consider for future collective bargaining.

Report with tables