The New York Times has reported that some colleagues at Berkshire Hathaway claim that former executive David Sokol created a hostile work environment.

According to the Times:

His brass-knuckled approach alienated some Berkshire employees, as when he suggested that people with an illness or other personal problems were problematic and when he unceremoniously fired a top executive and made him leave the office that day.

Flashes of his management style can be found in some earlier litigation as well. In one civil case, a judge rebuked Mr. Sokol for tampering with his company’s numbers so that a joint-venture partner would get a smaller payout. In another case, Mr. Sokol sued to find out which employees at a Berkshire unit were disparaging him.

David Sokol, once considered a potential successor to Warren Buffett, resigned on March 30 after allegedly violating the company’s ethics and insider trading policies.

Read more at the New York Times

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Ten Navy officers and sailors from the destroyer Stout were fired for “lack of professionalism” and for allowing officers to create a hostile work environment that included the bullying and humiliation of other sailors.

An investigation conducted by the Navy found that Cmdr. Nathan Borchers and Command Master Chief Susan Bruce-Ross were at fault for leadership failures that caused the problems to fester and grow.  Bruce-Ross was relieved of command.

Read more at The Virginian-Pilot

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The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against Hill Country Farms, doing business as Henry’s Turkey Service, for subjecting a group of 31 men with intellectual disabilities to severe abuse and discrimination for more than 20 years.

According to the EEOC, specifically, the complaint alleges that that the owners and staffers of Henry’s Turkey denied the workers lawful wages, paying them only $65 a month for full-time work; subjected them to a hostile work environment consisting of abusive verbal and physical harassment; restricted their freedom of movement; and imposed other harsh terms and conditions of employment such as requiring them to live in deplorable and sub-standard living conditions, and failing to provide adequate medical care when needed. 

The workplace bullying included frequently referring to the workers as “retarded”, “dumb ass” and “stupid”.  Class members reported acts of physical abuse including hitting, kicking, at least one case of handcuffing, and forcing the disabled workers to carry heavy weights as punishment.  The Henry’s Turkey supervisors, also the workers’ purported caretakers, were often dismissive of complaints of injuries or pain.

Read the entire EEOC press release

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Juan Pablo Pichardo filed a hostile work environment lawsuit against his employer, Rose Associates. 

Pichardo claims that his boss, Moises Guimet, repeatedly called him a “midget,” slapped him on his head, and posted several pictures of dwarfs on his locker.

Read more at NY Daily News

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The Wyoming State Supreme Court ruled that St. John’s Medical Center was justified in revoking Dr. Christian Guier’s surgical privileges in 2006 after the entire operating room staff signed a “Work Refusal Petition” to protest the “hostile work environment” and “psychological abuse” that they suffered while working with Guier.

St. John’s operating room workers complained that Guier screamed at and abused employees during the 14 years that he worked there.

Guier had appealed the hospital’s decision and sued the hospital and a number of physicians for “malicious destruction of his medical career.”

Read more at Outpatient Surgery Magazine

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Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

Current and former employees have accused Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of workplace bullying.

According to The Daily Caller, who spoke with “scores” of Jackson Lee employees, the Texas congresswoman created a hostile work environment for her staffers.

One employee claimed that Jackson Lee “constantly” referred to her as a “stupid motherf***er.”  Another was allegedly called a “stupid idiot,” a “moron,” and a “foolish girl” in front of the employee’s parents when they were visiting their daughter’s office.

Another staffer claims that his doctor recommended that he quit his job with Jackson Lee, telling him that “It’s your life or your job.”

Read more at The Daily Caller

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Mary Kay Peck

In April 2009, the Henderson City Council voted to fire City Manager Mary Kay Peck after they determined that she had created a “culture of fear” for her employees.
 
A month after she was fired, Peck filed a federal lawsuit and a grievance against the city over her termination.  The lawsuit was dismissed, and the grievance was sent to arbitration.
 
The City claimed that it terminated Peck “for cause,” while Peck claimed that she was fired “not for cause.”  According to Peck’s employment agreement, being terminated “not for cause” entitles her to a severance payment equal to the balance of her three-year employment term.
 
According to the Arbitrator, “The only dispute that exists is whether the City has to pay Ms. Peck for its decision to terminate her or not pay Ms. Peck for its decision to terminate her.”
 
The Arbitrator stated that “Cause is defined in the contract in paragraph 6, but the only portion of that definition that has any application to the present disupte is ‘(iv) intentional and continued failure to substantially perform her duties under this Agreement, subject to Section 6(b) of this Agreement.’”
 
On December 21, 2010, the Arbitrator ruled that Peck did not intentionally or continually fail to substantially perform her job duties, so the City’s termination is considered “without cause.”  As a result, he ruled that the City owes Peck compensation pursuant to the terms of a “not for cause” termination.
 
The Arbitrator did not consider workplace bullying to be an “intentional and continued failure” to substantially perform one’s duties.

On February 15, 2011, Henderson City Council approved a settlement where the city will pay Peck $1.3 million.

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Cynthia Stroum

A State Department inspector general’s report has accused former US Ambassador to Luxembourg, Cynthia Stroum, of workplace bullying.

According to the Inspector General’s January Report of Inspection, Embassy Luxembourg:

The Ambassador’s confrontational management style, chronic gaps in senior and other staffing caused by curtailments, and the absence of a sense of direction have brought major elements of Embassy Luxembourg to a state of dysfunction. These curtailments entail considerable costs to the U.S. Government. Morale among Americans and local staff is very low, and stress levels are high. Most employees describe the Ambassador as aggressive, bullying, hostile, and intimidating, which has resulted in an extremely difficult, unhappy, and uncertain work environment.

Stroum was apparently such a bad boss that a number of employees even went so far as to ask for transfers from Luxembourg to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Read more at CBS News

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Australian women Lill Cunningham and Dianne Wilkinson know from personal experience the devastation that can occur at the hands of a bad boss and in a hostile workplace. In addition, both took a grassroots approach to help ensure that what happened to them would be ruled illegal in Australia and wouldn’t be happening to others. However, as they’ve found out, it gets deeper and trickier even though some laws currently exist.

eBossWatch had the opportunity to chat with Lill and Dianne recently about the current state of affairs in Australia and what the future may hold for those who find themselves in the midst of workplace bullying in Australia (and also in the US).

Australia has some laws in place that are supposed to protect workers from bullying. What’s the history behind these laws and how effective are they in curtailing workplace bullying in Australia (pros & cons)?

Lill: In Australia, anti-discrimination/equal opportunity laws exist to protect employees from harassment in the workplace. It is against the law to harass a person in relation to their: sex, pregnancy, race, religious belief, marital status, disability, or age. These laws are similar to the current EEOC laws in the US. There is currently no law to directly address harassment in the workplace, if the employee does not fall under a protected class.  Like in the US, Unfair/Constructive Dismissal may be claimed in cases where ongoing harassment has occurred and the employee was forced to abandon their position.

If psychiatric injury results as a consequence of harassment (supported by professional medical opinion), an employee has the right to pursue a claim for Workers Compensation. In the event that the injury is serious and it may be proven the employer was negligent in their duty to provide the employee a safe workplace, it may be possible to take legal action via legislation under the Occupational Health and Safety Act (2004).

Dianne: The Australian Federal “Fair Work Australia Bill” was passed on March 20, 2009.  In January 2010 the Fair Work Australia Bill came into being, replacing the “WorkChoices” Industrial Relations Laws. The Fair Work Australia Bill does not make any allowances for “Workplace Abuse.”

WorkSafe Victoria has provision for information on workplace bullying, but there are no specifications for prosecution or accountability/culpability.  Even the “occupational violence” clause has nothing to do with workplace abuse – psychological, emotional, or physical of workers.

The Victorian Crimes Act 1958, Section 21A- Subsection 3 and Section 22, covers the deliberate intention to cause injury, but these laws are never invoked. Individual States have their own Industrial Relations laws, but none to specifically protect workers from abuse. General whistleblower laws in Australia are designed to protect people who report illegal actions taken by state organizations, public sector employees, etc. in South Australia, whistleblower protection extends to the private sector, and the Corporations Act contains a section extending whistleblower protection to employees of corporations, though not to private businesses or charities. However, this protection does not save the person from the ravages of the system.

As for pros and cons, I do not see any positive developments in worker protection from abuse in this country and there are no laws that EFFECTIVELY deal with the situation.

The authority that deems to protect injured workers, WorkSafe, has significantly raised the bar in relation to qualifying for compensation and even the most basic financial assistance to cover urgent costs of psychiatric, emotional, medical, and pharmaceutical needs.
I believe that the Australia Governments, both State and Federal, are distinctly unwilling to acknowledge the problem of workplace abuse. Experts such as Prof. Patrick McGorry, (former Victorian of the Year) are unable to attract government attention to our burgeoning mental health needs. With suicides related to workplace bullying frequently occurring in Australia and workplace injury costing the national economy between $6b and $13b annually, plus incalculable human costs, Australia has a serious problem that appears to be deliberately ignored.
I use my own experience with politicians as testimony of their disinterest.

Any advice for those of us in the US working towards the establishment of a workplace bullying law?

Lill: I see many campaigners in the US excited by the prospect of a new law to assist in    eradicating abusive workplaces.  In my state of Australia, although we have a law that many workers believe can be accessed should the need arise, the reality is quite different.                             
While “employer was negligent in their duty to provide the employee a safe workplace” seems quite straightforward, there are numerous clauses that have been added to this, obviously designed to exclude most claims, regardless of the employers’ negligence. Of course fraudulent claims must be eliminated, but the bar is set so high that it seems the majority of claims could easily fall into the fraudulent category. As it presently stands, employers are protected from legal action in the majority of cases, leaving many injured employees out in the cold. So, I would advise you all to be aware of the underlying clauses that accompany any proposed legislation in the US.

Dianne: Personally, I do not think that any law reform can be effective unless it addresses the obligations of “accountability and culpability” of:

• individual perpetrators
• “bystanders” who facilitated the abuse by their conscious inaction
• companies/organizations/businesses and their officers for failing to take effective action to ensure that workplace abuse does not exist or against perpetrators and instigators of the abuses.

I believe it is essential that the misconduct of cruel workplace psychological, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse be recognized by the law as a criminal offence where:

an offender has the intention to cause physical or mental harm to the victim or to arouse apprehension or fear in the victim for his or her own safety or that of any other person if:

(a) the offender knows that engaging in a course of conduct of that kind would be likely to cause such harm or arouse such apprehension or fear; or
(b) the offender in all the particular circumstances ought to have understood that engaging in a course of conduct of that kind would be likely to cause such harm or arouse such apprehension or fear and it actually did have that result.

The resulting damage to the victim — psychological, emotional, punitive, and financial — must also be of major factor for consideration.
 
What inspired you to get involved in the anti-workplace bullying movement, start a Facebook Page, etc.?

Lill: I wouldn’t say I was exactly inspired, but my own experiences in a toxic workplace led me here.  Workplace harassment is a scourge that is exploiting the basic human rights of workers worldwide. If there is to be any hope of reducing this harmful behavior, legislation needs to be designed fairly and not weighted heavily in favor of employers, as it currently is in Australia.      So, I add my voice to those who are seeking law reform and hope to validate the experiences of those who are trying to survive the effects or after effects of toxic workplaces.        

Dianne: I embarked on my passionate campaign seeking justice for myself and two young people, each of us subjected to deliberately contrived systematic campaigns of inhuman emotional and psychological  “war games” — physical and sexual misconduct that left each of us so damaged and broken and I am now the only survivor.

I had no idea that the “black plague” of cruel workplace — psychological, emotional, sexual and physical abuse — even existed outside my own workplace of 25 years.  It was a very dark secret that I lived with because I simply had to keep my job.  It is an insidious cancer that is killing you but you don’t even know it’s happening until it is too late because the agony becomes part of one’s very existence for so long.  You think it’s normal.

For over a decade, I have campaigned politicians including Prime Ministers. Utterly futile. Then I discovered that workplace abuse is a global catastrophe and “bullycide” has reached pandemic proportions.  I no longer fight alone.

A potentially precedent-setting employment discrimination case reached the Supreme Court earlier this month.  The Supreme Court is expected to rule on this case later this term.

In Staub v. Proctor Hospital, Vincent Staub, a radiology technician at Proctor Hospital in Peoria, Illinois from 1990 until April 2004, claims that he was fired because of his association with the military.

A jury originally sided with Staub, and Proctor Hospital appealed the ruling.  The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the jury verdict because it believed that the decision to terminate Staub was made by a Proctor Hospital executive who was unconnected to the alleged anti-military bias.

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals describes the workplace bullying that Staub claims he was subjected to:

“It was around that time that Janice Mulally, second in command of the Diagnostic Imaging Department, began to prepare the department work schedules. Staub would notify Mulally of his drill and training obligations, which occupied one weekend per month and two weeks during the summer. Before Mulally took over scheduling, Staub had weekends off. But Mulally placed Staub back in the weekend rotation, creating conflicts with his drill schedule. Mulally did this even though she had advance notice of Staub’s military obligations, and when Staub approached her about the issue she became agitated. Beginning in 2000, the scheduling conflicts were only ‘occasional,’ but Mulally’s attitude reflected a deeper problem. Mulally responded to Staub’s questions by throwing him out of her office and saying she ‘didn’t want to deal with it.’ Staub found some relief by going to department head Michael Korenchuk, yet it was far from complete. Sometimes Mulally would change Staub’s schedule after Korenchuk spoke with her, but other times she would post a notice on the bulletin board stating that volunteers were needed to cover the drill weekends, portraying Staub as irresponsible. And occasionally Mulally made Staub use his vacation time for drill days or scheduled him for additional shifts without notice. Mulally made her reasons plain: She called Staub’s military duties ‘bullshit’ and said the extra shifts were his ‘way of paying back the department for everyone else having to bend over backwards to cover [his] schedule for the Reserves.’ And it came as no surprise that Korenchuk did little to remedy the situation. Although Korenchuk only commented about Staub’s reserve duties on a ‘couple different occasions,’ these comments were none too subtle. Korenchuk characterized drill weekends as ‘Army Reserve bullshit’ and ‘a b[u]nch of smoking and joking and [a] waste of taxpayers['] money.’”

[Staub co-worker] Knoerle left her post in July of 2003, to be replaced by Leslie Sweborg. Two weeks into the job, Sweborg met Mulally and another coworker, Angie Day, for drinks after work. Expecting nothing more than casual chit-chat, Sweborg was shocked when the conversation turned to Staub. Mulally was blunt: ‘She said that [Staub's] military duty had been a strain on the[] department’ and ‘she did not like him as an employee.’ So Mulally asked Sweborg ‘to help her get rid of him.’ Sweborg refused. In her opinion, Staub was always competent and professional, and there was no reason for such animosity.

“Shortly afterwards she called Staub’s Reserve Unit Administrator, Joseph Abbidini, in Bartonville, Illinois. Mulally had called Abbidini on a prior occasion to confirm that Staub was actually a member of the Reserves, but now she wanted to know if Staub could be excused from some of his military duties. Mulally asked Abbidini if Staub really had to attend two-week training in the summer because he was needed at work. Abbidini stated that the training was mandatory. Most Reserve members have outside employment, he explained, so excusing Staub would set an ugly precedent. Mulally’s response? She called Abbadini an ‘asshole’ and hung up. (Again, we add that we are, as we are required to do at this stage of the proceedings, taking all facts in the light most favorable to Mr. Staub.)”

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