Donald P. Russo, The Morning Call

”The concept of workplace bullying is an undefined area of employment law.”

Those of us hurtling through our middle-aged years will, every once in a while, have one of those ”Oh, how times have changed” moments. I had one last week while doing some legal research on the Internet. I found a Pennsylvania county court opinion in which the judge quoted Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia. I thought the conventional wisdom was that we were supposed to only quote ”authoritative” sources. Well, as a lawyer, I will take my lead from a judge. If a court of record is willing to use a Wikipedia quote, then I will start quoting Wikipedia. This is a good time to begin, because I have been working on a column on workplace bullying.

The concept of workplace bullying is an undefined area of employment law because there are no laws defining it or circumscribing it. Most of the public understands the basic structure of federal anti-discrimination laws. We are all employees at will, meaning that we can be fired for any reason or for no reason at all. The only exception is if our termination was in some way motivated by race, age, gender, religion or disability. If so, it becomes a discrimination case, and the terminated employee might have a claim to take to court. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Web site, eeoc.gov, provides quick references on this.

We also can examine the concept of workplace bullying as an area not covered by any current laws. Here is where I think the Wikipedia definition of workplace bullying is quite helpful.

According to Wikipedia: ”Workplace bullying, like childhood bullying, is the tendency of individuals or groups to use persistent aggressive or unreasonable behavior against a co-worker. Workplace bullying can include such tactics as verbal, nonverbal, and even physical abuse. This type of aggression is particularly difficult because unlike the typical forms of schoolyard bullying, workplace bullies often operate within the established rules and policies of their organization and their society. Bullying in the workplace therefore takes a wide variety of forms, from being rude or belligerent, to screaming or cursing, destruction of property or work product, social ostracism, and even physical assault Â… workplace bullying is most often ‘a combination of tactics in which numerous types of hostile communication and behavior are used.’ ”

Wikipedia quotes Gary and Ruth Namie, who have defined workplace bullying as ”repeated, health-harming mistreatment, verbal abuse, or conduct which is threatening, humiliating, intimidating, or sabotage that interferes with work or some combination of the three.” Author Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik is also quoted, because she expands this definition, stating that workplace bullying is ”persistent verbal and nonverbal aggression at work, that includes personal attacks, social ostracism, and a multitude of other painful messages and hostile interactions.”

Wikipedia’s definition further cites the work of Ms. Lutgin-Sandvik, who has referred to a lack of unifying language to name the phenomenon of workplace bullying. This poses a problem, ”because without a unifying term or phrase, individuals have difficulty naming their experiences of abuse, and therefore have trouble pursuing justice against the bully.” Wikipedia goes on to note that unlike the term ”sexual harassment,” which named a specific problem and is now recognized in U.S. law (and many international laws), ”workplace bullying is still being established as a relevant social problem.” Notably, Dr. Ruth Namie and Dr. Gary Namie have formed their own institute on the topic, ”The Workplace Bullying Institute.” (Online at http://bullyinginstitute.org/ )

As an employment attorney who has been seeing disgruntled employees in my office for decades, I was overjoyed to find out that scholars were actually writing about this subject. My own observations of this phenomenon are merely anecdotal, but I certainly have noticed it in the way that a small town family doctor might notice certain disease patterns presenting themselves in his office. And, the sources of the problem are quite interesting.

At the risk of making what might sound like a gender-biased observation, some of the cruelest cases I have seen are cases involving female managers who are bullying their female subordinates. This is ironic, because 50 years ago, due to male gender bias, that female manager would not have had her current job.

There are a few common-sense things that can be done to combat the problem on a daily basis, but for the most part, federal legislation is sorely needed to address this matter.

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