How to deal with a new boss who seems like a bully?

[SoWhereIsTheElusiveWorkman]

In a nice professional job for a big well known company. New boss has come in and is either completely clueless in terms of emotional intelligence or a total bully who is ramping up and looking for evidence and weak spots.

Boss has a large number of direct recruits. How do I set protect myself going forward? Am thinking of documenting everything etc. I am in a union but I am not always sure they are brilliant.

Are there good books about protecting yourself or does anyone have advice?

Hard to say without examples of what you're calling bullying.

Document everything. EVERYTHING. Any time an interaction makes you feel a bit weird, write it down.
Every interaction you have verbally, that you feel might back-fire, follow up with them via an email for the paper trail.
"Hi Jan, just to follow up on our discussion about X. You said XYZ, so I will action blah blah."

Unfortunately, I had a sociopathic ex-boss, who was a horrible bully. But she was also fairly incompetent. So having everything in documents and emails really helped.