By DON STACOM
(Hartford, CT) Courant
March 10 2007
Menacing managers, snide supervisors and caustic colleagues, beware.
A nationwide campaign to end "workplace bullying" has reached Connecticut this year, with lawmakers considering legislation to prohibit bosses from being abusive to their workers.
"We don't allow bullying in schools, and there should be no bullying in the workplace, either," said Sen. Edith Prague, D-Columbia, a key advocate of the proposed law.
"We should have some kind of standard of respect for each other regardless of whether you're the boss or the employee," Prague said. "Why should anybody be subjected to bullying or embarrassing treatment of any kind?"
The Connecticut bill would outlaw "threatening, intimidating or humiliating" conduct by a boss or co-worker and would ban repeated insults and epithets. There is no description of precisely what those terms cover, but the target is "hostile and offensive" behavior that happens more than once.
The proposal also doesn't specify a penalty; instead, it would give workers the grounds to sue their employers or co-workers. It is based on the Healthy Workplace Bill, an initiative promoted over the past decade by Gary and Ruth Namie. The Washington state couple have written a book and created a consulting business based on their contention that workplace bullying - inflicted most commonly by managers against less-powerful employees - is psychologically damaging to individuals and destructive to companies that don't intervene.
At least a half-dozen other states are considering similar legislation this year, but so far there are no laws anywhere in the country against workplace hostility, according to the Namies' website, bullybusters.org.
"This would be a pioneering thing, I think we'd be the first. That's something to be proud of," said Prague, whose labor committee backed the bill this week on an 8-3 party-line vote. That decision sent it to the Senate floor for a vote later in the legislative session.
There's a good reason that no other states have adopted the law, according to Sen. Tony Guglielmo, R-Stafford, one of the three Republicans who cast "no" votes.
"There's no doubt bullying goes on, and the concept of stopping it is probably good," Guglielmo said Thursday. "But this bill has no enforcement, and it has no intermediate step -- people just go right to court. No arbitration. I think that would create a lot of litigation that would just cost everybody a lot of money."
Connecticut has laws to protect workers against sexual and racial harassment or age discrimination, but nothing specifying workplace intimidation or hostility.
A spokeswoman for the Connecticut Business and Industry Association said the organization opposes the bill.
Copyright 2007, Hartford Courant
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