Employers Become Aware

Mass. Firms Fight Domestic Abuse

Associated Press, April 16, 2000 -- A group of Massachusetts companies are tackling a problem that businesses have been reluctant to confront -- domestic violence.

The group, Employers Against Domestic Violence, realized that it's not just a domestic problem: domestic violence costs American businesses up to $5 billion each year in absenteeism, lower productivity, higher turnover and health care costs, according to the Bureau of National Affairs.

Employers Against Domestic Violence began three years ago as a series of lunchtime discussions among several Boston companies about how to protect employees from abusive husbands and boyfriends.

Today, the group is a formal nonprofit with 28 private corporations among its members, as well as government, police and advocacy groups. It has helped similar organizations get started in cities such as New York and Indianapolis.

Last summer, Colleen Mackesey was trying to keep her two children away from a husband she says was abusive and had threatened to kill the entire family.

Her employer, Massachusetts General Hospital, sent security officers to accompany her to court and to watch her home. The company, run by Partners Healthcare System, also promised to help her flee the state if necessary and provided therapy on company time.

``They said you can go to court 4,000 times and you won't be fired,'' Mackesey said.

Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, a Boston law firm, keeps information about domestic violence stocked in bathrooms. Last October, it slipped a bookmark with telephone numbers into employee paychecks.

EADV members cite statistic from the Family Violence Prevention Fund that one in four American women report having been physically abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives.

``We realized if it was happening in society, it was happening in the workplace,'' said Rebecca Jones, a director of human resources at Verizon Wireless.

Employers Acting Out of Self-Interest

As with Workplace Violence, employers have discovered the financial impact of a social phenomenon when it interferes with an employee's uninterrupted attention to work and an ability to produce.

In fact, employers have been the last to recognize the truth about workplace violence. Experts have found that worker-on-worker violence accounts for only 11% of the deaths.

Most deaths come from customers and acquaintances who find their victims at the workplace. So, in typical American fashion, it is only the rare variety that makes headlines in the press. In knee-jerk fashion, employers rush to create anti-violence, zero-tolerance policies as much for public relations damage control as for being mad that productivity is disrupted by explosions of violence. Written elsewhere is our complaint that such approaches are unrealistically aimed only at non-supervisory employees.

Now comes the discovery of domestic violence by employers. The good news is that they finally recognize that victims deserve protection at work from abusive spouses who know where to find their victims, essentially passive sitting ducks chained to their desks at work.

We applaud the efforts of the pioneers in the domestic violence movement who have partnered with employers in their successful awareness and outrage campaign.

Targets of workplace bullying are similarly trapped in relationships from which it is difficult to remove the perpetrator. Targets are often seen as bringing on their own problems as are abused spouses. Outsiders wonder aloud and critically why Targets don't "simply get up and just leave." And it is true that Targets, like abuse victims, while in the middle of their dilemma are emotionally overwhelmed, which prevents them from seeing alternatives, however remote. Bullied Targets, like victims of domestic violence, are also more hurt from verbal assaults than from physical attacks (short of homicide) in that emotional trauma is longer lasting, more resistant to healing, than physical wounds.

Employers Driven by Compassion for the Abused

According to the Family Violence Prevention Fund,

Often a battered woman is a working woman. It is important for employers to create a climate in which women can feel comfortable talking about the violence experienced at home and to ask for help.

If you think a co-worker may be abused, talk with her, and let her know that help is available.

Be alert for symptoms of domestic violence in co-workers. Women who are being beaten may have unexplained bruises. They may appear distracted, have difficulty concentrating, skip work often, or receive repeated, upsetting telephone calls from the men in their lives.

Employer-provided EAP or counseling services should help and have referrals for abuse victims.

For more information about the Family Violence Prevention Fund and "Work to End Domestic Violence Day," October 1.