Workplace Bullying

Bullying is most often associated with the school playground or the Internet but has become a big problem in the workplace as well. Workplace bullying is an act of verbal abuse, aggression or intimidation against a coworker (most often a subordinate) without regard to the victim's protected class. In other words, bullying is separate from sexual harassment or discrimination (although members of a protected class still may be victims of bullying).

Bullying is not illegal, per se, but it still poses risks to your organization in the form of diminished productivity, lowered workplace morale and employees' mental and physical health issues. Severe bullying has been linked to stress-related illnesses such as high blood pressure, depression, anxiety and sleep disorders.

More than one-third of U.S. workers have been bullied, according to a 2010 workplace bullying survey conducted by Zogby International. The survey also found that 68 percent of bullying involves the same gender (i.e. women bullying women, or men bullying men). A similar survey conducted in 2007 found that bullying is four times more prevalent than illegal forms of workplace harassment.

The survey defined workplace bullying as follows:

Repeated mistreatment: sabotage by others that prevented work from getting done, verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation and humiliation.

Workplace Bullying and the Law

While there are no state or federal laws prohibiting workplace bullying, workers who are members of a protected class (i.e. women, racial minorities) may have recourse under state and local anti-discrimination or sexual harassment laws. That is not to say that acts of bullying are inherently acts of harassment or discrimination but they often overlap.

Since 2003, 21 states have introduced legislation to prohibit bullying in the workplace but none have been signed into law.

A Massachusetts bill introduced in 2009 cited statistics claiming that between 37 and 59 percent of employees in the state experience workplace bullying. The Massachusetts bill and similar legislation in other states are written in a way that the states themselves would not be involved in such cases. In other words, claimants would be responsible for hiring private attorneys to bring suit against their alleged bullies.

See the Discrimination and Harassment section in the Small Business Center for information about related workplace issues.