Workplace bullying and mobbing are forms of psychological abuse perpetrated through interpersonal abuse that violate an employee’s inherent basic human right to dignity. Behaviors are directed in a targeted and/or systematic manner enough to create a toxic work environment that a reasonable person would find unsuitable to perform regular duties and tasks. A single severe incident of this behavior may also constitute psychological abuse.

There's a pattern to abuse at work. Here’s how it works:

1. Workplace bullying typically begins when one employee, who is generally insecure and/or jealous, is threatened by the competence or demeanor of another employee. The bully targets an unsuspecting employee to minimize and/or eliminate the perceived threat the employee poses to them. Bullies use persistent psychological abuse to control the narrative. They try to convince the employee they are incompetent. They try to convince others the employee is incompetent.

2. In toxic work environments, when employees report psychologically abusive behavior to the proper workplace authorities, those authorities willfully ignore the complaints. Employers are not liable for psychologically abusive behavior, nor do they want to be. The employer misleads the unsuspecting employee to believe they have a legitimate complaint process to remedy the problem.

3. The employer fails to alter the employee's work environment. The employer doesn’t remove the stressor. The emboldened bully continues to harass and abuse the target without consequence or deterrent. The complaint process is unnecessarily prolonged.

4. The unsuspecting employee voluntarily leaves, dies, or is fired, succumbing to the silent killer stress of the work environment. There is significant physical, mental, and emotional injury as well as severe economic harm. Game over. The bully wins. Their perceived competition is gone. The employer wins. Their perceived threat of liability is gone. The unsuspecting employee had done nothing to provoke either.

5. Trauma upon trauma. When the employee realizes the institutional tampering with their health and livelihood, forcing them off the payroll to avoid liability, trauma upon trauma occurs.

6. Upon trauma. The employee further realizes there is no legal recourse for any of it.

Who’s picking up the tab for the long-term health care of thousands of unemployed citizens and basic needs costs? You are: the taxpayer. And you have been for decades.

Workplace psychological abuse is employee exploitation. At its root cause is avoidance of employer liability. The status quo, employers are negatively incentivized to address the issue. Employers choose to avoid a perceived threat of liability over human well-being.

The Workplace Psychological Safety Act (WPSA) provides a cause of action for employees who suffer from workplace psychological abuse.

The WHY behind the bill:

1. There is no current law that protects workers from workplace psychological abuse. Unless you’re a member of a protected class (sex, race, age, etc.) under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act — and can prove the abuse is from your protected class membership — you don’t have rights to psychological safety at work under law. Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED) law requires victims to not only prove the abuser’s intent but also to show severe emotional distress, a near impossible threshold to prove.

2. Proving intent doesn’t work with anti-discrimination law — and it won’t work with mistreatment in general. Anti-discrimination law used to work when it focused on impact. The courts’ shift in the 1980s to a focus on intent has rendered anti-discrimination law nearly useless. It’s no secret it’s an epic failure. The WPSA does not require victims to prove their abuser’s intent, so it would strengthen protections for women, workers of color, workers with disabilities, and workers in the LGBT community who can prove mistreatment but not intent.

3. Oftentimes, employers don’t enforce their own policies or practice what they preach around training — and even retaliate against those who report abuse. There is no law stating employers have to follow their own policies. Tennessee passed a bill incentivizing workplace anti-abuse policies, and California passed a training-only bill. Neither are effective. Policy and training laws by themselves don’t work. In addition, workers compensation laws don’t recognize toxic work environments or psychological injury. Workers compensation is employer-controlled and requires employees to waive their right to sue. Employers know there are loopholes in the law and misuse those loopholes to employees' detriment.

4. Employers need accountability to make our workplaces psychologically safe. The WPSA creates an incentive for employers to prevent and address workplace psychological abuse and uphold psychological safety at work. The WPSA requires employers to do what’s right.

5. We can prevent harm of any kind. No law will eradicate an issue, but the goal is to prevent workplace psychological abuse as much as possible. Prevention means not waiting until harm occurs (not just psychological or physical harm). Sexual harassment law acknowledges a hostile work environment is enough for legal recourse. The WPSA sets its baseline for a legal claim at a toxic work environment, consistent with sexual harassment law.

6. A remedy must be affordable for all workers. Abuse should be illegal regardless of protected class status. Members of protected classes also deserve more protections. State human rights commissions addressing this issue gives low-wage workers more options in our pay-to-play legal system.

There is no denying mistreatment at work has a discriminatory impact. According to the 2016 EEOC Select Task Force for the Study of Workplace Harassment Report, “During the course of fiscal year 2015, EEOC received approximately 28,000 charges alleging harassment from employees working for private employers or state and local government employers.” Their findings:

“…anywhere from 25% to 85% of women report having experienced sexual harassment in the workplace.”

“…[in a survey regarding racial and ethnic harassment], 70% of the respondents reported experiencing some form of verbal harassment and 45% reported experiencing exclusionary behaviors.”

“35% of LGB-identified respondents who reported being ‘open’ at work reported having been harassed in the workplace.”

“…20% of respondents with disabilities reported experiencing harassment or unfair treatment at work because of their disability.”

“…8% of respondents reported having been exposed to unwelcome comments about their age.” Source: https://www.eeoc.gov/select-task-force-study-harassment-workplace

If you are not in a protected class, you have even less protection in the American workplace when it comes to bullying and mobbing.

It's time to say we're not going to allow our government to tolerate abuse at work. Just as our government steps in with abusive families, our government needs to take action with toxic employers.

1. It gives targeted employees legal recourse for employers creating a toxic work environment with a focus on specific, common behaviors that a reasonable person would deem toxic. Right now, it’s perfectly legal to be abusive at work in the U.S., even though it’s illegal in most of the industrialized world. U.S. employers simply have way too much power. Targeted employees will be able to:

File a restraining order against the employee who violates the Act depending on state law.

Call for an internal investigation.

Bypass a rigged internal process by calling for an investigation by a state human rights commission.

Sue the employer and/or individual(s) in violation of the Act directly for economic, compensatory, and/or punitive damages and attorney’s fees. Employees can also sue criminally and choose to anonymously publicly disclose the case outcome, removing employers’ ability to silence them with non-disclosure agreements.

2. It requires employers to acknowledge, monitor, detect, prevent, discourage, and adequately address incidences of psychological abuse. Employers will no longer be allowed to sweep abuse at work under the rug and pretend they’re following protocol while ignoring abuse or retaliating to avoid liability. They’ll be required to:

Adopt and implement policies and training.

Conduct an annual anonymous workplace climate survey to monitor the prevalence of abuse in their workplaces.

When employers don't address workplace bullying internally, costs of leaving without health insurance get externalized onto taxpayers. "…the United States experiences about fifty-nine thousand excess deaths and about $63 billion in incremental costs annually compared to what would be predicted given its per capita income level. Considering the total toll previously estimated (of about 120,000 excess deaths and $180 billion in costs), our analyses indicate that about half of the deaths and about a third of the incremental costs from workplace conditions appear to be potentially preventable if the United States were more similar to other advanced industrialized economies," said Stanford Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer in his 2018 book Dying for A Paycheck.

Workplace abuse affects turnover, absenteeism, presenteeism, opportunity lost, and legal defense. The American Psychological Association estimates that workplace stress costs the U.S. economy $500 billion a year. Some 550 billion workdays are lost each year due to stress on the job, 60 to 80 percent of workplace accidents occur because of stress, and more than 80 percent of doctor visits are stress-related.

In toxic work environments, where bullying and mobbing is allowed and utilized to avoid institutional liability, employers are ill-advised legally and consequently fail to take into account these other factors. One study shows that “companies who focus on effective internal functioning and communication enjoy a 57 percent higher total return, are more than 4.5 times more likely to have highly engaged employees, and are 20 percent more likely to report reduced turnover when compared to competitors who demonstrate ineffective communication practices” (Civility Partners LLC, 2009).

When employers ignore employee well-being internally to avoid liability, the unemployment and uninsured health care costs are externalized on to the taxpayer. Prevention is both less expensive and more effective than remediation.

Committing to a tunnel vision to avoid liability at all costs has a hefty price tag. It’s not easy to put a price tag on the following, though researchers calculate estimations can be three times as much as the employee’s original salary or more:

Work team morale and productivity

Commitment to the organization

Retention of skilled employees

Employer reputation

Absenteeism

Workplace violence

Performance decline

Researcher Christine Porath said that “time wasted at work or spent searching for another job could cost companies up to $300 billion a year (more than the total net profit of the Fortune 500 companies).” In a poll of 800 managers, Porath and Researcher Christine Pearson found that among targets of abuse at work:

48 percent intentionally decreased their work effort

47 percent intentionally decreased time spent at work. (The American Institute of Stress estimates that one million workers are absent each workday due to stress.)

38 percent intentionally decreased the quality of their work

80 percent lost work time worrying about the incident

63 percent lost work time avoiding the offender

66 percent said their performance declined

78 percent said that commitment to the organization declined

12 percent said they left their job because of the mistreatment

25 percent admitted to taking their frustrations out on customers

Left unchecked, workplace psychological abuse becomes the cultural norm at an organization.

Workers deserve psychologically safe work environments.

Will you support the Workplace Psychological Safety Act?