Opinion: B.C. needs to protect victims of toxic workplaces

from Vancouver Sun

Re: When bullies turn work into hell, Feb. 26

This article reassures those who have “paid a price” for standing up to bullies that the abuse was not the victim’s fault.

However, I find the recommendations to take the matter to the company’s human resources department, launch a grievance through a union or file a human rights complaint to be fairly naive. Studies have proved that bullying develops in environments where management endeavours to dissolve social bonds, and when management denounces bullying through policy but abets it through action or inaction. Research has shown that the bullies often rise in the organizational ladder.

It has also been determined that the weakening of labour unions results from bullying.

Furthermore, in British Columbia there are no anti-bullying laws. To prove one’s case on the basis of “she said, they said” is a formidable challenge; the victim will require a very good lawyer. Co-workers cannot be counted on to serve as witnesses for victims of bullying because they are more concerned about their own status at work. Indeed, as your article points out, “There are few happy endings in workplace bullying.”

It is time for B.C. to follow the lead of Quebec and other provinces that have recognized the occurrence and the personal devastation this workplace phenomenon incurs on members of a toxic workplace.

Enna B. de Guzman, Vancouver