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By Daniel Fisher
Forbes
September 9, 2007
You can slink away when your boss screams at you. Or, if certain state legislators have their way, you can sue.
It's a fine American tradition for a boss to scream at a subordi- nate, everyone from Mr. Dithers to Leona "Queen of Mean" Helmsley to Linda Wachner, who reportedly told slacker salesmen (she denies this), "You're eunuchs! How can your wives stand you!"
It's also a fine American tradition to sue. New Jersey and at least 12 other states are mulling antibullying laws that in some cases would allow workers to sue their bosses for "threatening, intimidating or humiliating" behavior, "repeated infliction of verbal abuse" and even "gratuitous sabotage Ö of a person's work performance." (How that would apply to magazine editors is unclear.)
Under existing laws U.S. courts generally reject lawsuits against supervisors, unless they're accused of discriminating on the basis of age, race or sex. But if you harass all your employees--if you are what lawyers call "the equal-opportunity asshole"--you're scot-free. "Yeah, he harasses women and Hispanics, but he harasses everybody," explains Minneapolis lawyer Marko Mrkonich.
Defining what is abusive will undoubtedly take some doing. James Abrams, a Denver, Colo. lawyer, cites the manager who plied his workers with beer each Friday and then goaded them into fighting each other in a back room. Without an antibullying law, Abrams says, an employee who was injured in a fight had to file a workmen's compensation claim.
But what about the library director in Pueblo, Colo. who had the gall to hand out copies of Winning, the management guide by hard-charging former GE chief Jack Welch? Something called the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Wash. thinks this was outrageous behavior. Given Welch's reputation for fostering "destructive competition among employees," its Web site says, the manager was clearly trying to "encourage bullying at the library." So, yes, sue that bastard library director for handing out books.
###
A blog entry on Workplace Bullying
A Forbes writer saw how a library director in Pueblo gave out Jack Welch's book, Winning, to his supervisors and made fun of anti-bullying advocates who didn't like that. He also implied that what one's definition of bullying is another's management style. That reporter was given information of this director's bullying, abusive "management style" yet sought fit NOT to include any of that in there. This is my letter to the Forbes editor which will probably not be published:
****"[S]ue that bastard library director for handing out books". . .to further promote an already well-established agenda of abusive behavior. That is what Mr. Fisher conveniently forgot to add along with the long history of damaging and costly (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars) bullying behavior that director has caused. And, yes, I know this from experience. What's fascinating is that this director loves "Neutron Jack's" old rules methods but when Jack Welch talks about honesty and integrity - those concepts are out the window. Further, Mr. Welch says that a manager who caused a union attempt should either be fired or seriously rehabilitated. The library director caused a union attempt, so, um, what is he still doing in his job? How easy it is to "follow" abusive tactics and ignore everything else.
I agree, Mr. Fisher - absolutely sue him. Maybe then he'll think twice before abusing his employees.****
I'm all for handing out books. I am not all for promoting an abusive agenda while ignoring everything else. Heck, I WISH that director would follow all of what Jack Welch said in his book, Winning. That way, he wouldn't have his job anymore, the staff would be free from an abusive management style and the taxpayers wouldn't have holes burning in their pockets.
