Domestic abuse focus of workshop

By Frank Peebles , Prince George Citizen

Domestic abuse used to result in the phrase “it’s none of my business” but a workshop this week in Prince George will explain to unions, employers, managers and others in the job setting that it literally is.

“We have tried that ‘none of my business’ idea for a long time and we know it hasn’t worked,” said Morgen Baldwin, a former PG resident coming back to facilitate the session on behalf of the agencies involved. “Letting it be considered a private matter is part of what feeds the power imbalance and allows aggressors to continue to use violence. Also, there is a direct impact on the people who work around that person, either the victim or the aggressor, and that is going to show up eventually on your bottom line. Domestic violence has costs on so many levels.”

The workshop is aimed at the forestry and mining fields and has already attracted a number of confirmed participants, many of whom are men. Baldwin said including men is a vital missing component of the social education usually seen in this field of thought.

The sponsor agencies – the B.C. Association of Specialized Victim Assistance and Counselling Programs (BCASVACP), the Ending Relationship Abuse Society of B.C. (ERABC), the Ministry of Community Services, WorkSafe B.C., the B.C. Federation of Labour and the United Steelworkers Union – also want the message to get out into small and rural communities. Hence the focus on the two dominant industries in outlying British Columbia, industries also heavily populated by men.

Men need to approach the men in their workplace who exhibit tendencies to overpower his partner, Baldwin said, but furthermore all people need to intervene when anyone of any gender in their workplace presents signs of being either an abuser or someone being abused.

“What we’re doing is just helping people understand how to refer people, how to raise the issue in a non-threatening way, and how to just be attuned to it,” said Baldwin. “It always has impacted the workplace. It affects people in their personal lives which they take to work and affects the workplace, and that can turn around and affect you back again which you then take home. And there is such an opportunity at the workplace for identification and intervention.”

This is not new. Many of the world’s most common corporations and unions have highly developed programs to aid employees in an abusive relationship, because the cost of helping is much cheaper on the spreadsheet (less absenteeism, less retraining for staff turnover, less lackluster performance, etc.) and even more profound on a moral basis (people aren’t getting hit, kids aren’t seeing that and learning from it, your employee doesn’t end up in the hospital or killed).

“In many cases, and there are those cases we know of right in Prince George, where an abusive spouse can actually do harm to your employees just because they happened to be there when the violence breaks out in the workplace,” Baldwin said. The most storied local case is that of Mark Guillet who was shot and wounded by Gordon Darrell Wolfe when he burst into his wife’s workplace and shot her to death in 2000. Guillet also worked there. Wolfe was convicted of both first degree murder and attempted murder in the attack.

Baldwin cited a 2004 study by the Maine Department of Labor and Family Crisis Services that
asked people charged with violence in relationships about the impact their behavior had on their work:
- 48 per cent had difficulty concentrating at work;
- 19 per cent reported a workplace accident or near miss from inattentiveness;
- Over 75 per cent used workplace resources at least once to express remorse or anger, check up on, pressure, or threaten the victim.

Another American study, a 2005 national telephone survey of full-time employed adults found that:
- 21 per cent of full-time employed adults were victims of violence in relationships;
- 64 per cent of them indicated their work performance was significantly impacted.

A study in Canada, done by the Canadian Centre for Research on Violence Against Women and Children pegged the overall economic cost of domestic violence in this country at about $1 billion per year, a quarter of which pertained to time missed from work. That time can be missed for a number of reasons including the employee is in the hospital, is humiliated and can’t face co-workers, is stressed or injured and can’t face workplace duties, is in jail or is under court restrictions, is in hiding, has been forbidden from attending work by the aggressor, and others.

All of these and more, said Baldwin, make it everyone’s business to help if they can. To join the workshop and learn more about how to be a good friend or an observant coworker, register by calling Baldwin at 250-635-5300 or Sandra Beggs 250-559-8831.

The session will happen Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in room 204 of the Civic Centre. Lunch is provided.