I wonder if you'd mind taking a look at this... about workplace bullying

[philmassive]

My OH has been off work with depression for more than 3 months due to workplace bullying by his manager, which has been horrible for him and has had a negative effect on our whole family. He has little or no chance of being able to tackle the bully, who has a history of bullying and has been moved from job to job within the workplace in order to move him away from people he has previously bullied.

The more people who I talk to about this, the more that I find it's really common - everyone seems to have either been bullied at work, or knows someone who has been.

I've started a petition on Downing Street's website to ask the Government to do more about workplace bullying. Please sign if it's something that bothers you as much as it does me...
petitions.pm.gov.uk/Work-bullying/

Thanks in advance!

petitions.pm.gov.uk/Work-bullying/
Just about to sign it now. I was in a job once where I was bullied and it's not nice, and can happen to anyone.

Would just like to ask - now, I know how horrible it can be, have seen it many times and been a victim (though I just quit my job and found another one) but what do you expect this petition to do?

I think it is taken fairly seriously at the moment, I don't know what the government can do about nasty people though.

Genuine question BTW, I am not belittling it.

I think there needs to be an actual law that makes bosses have to deal with it. When I saw my boss (the headteacher) about the severe bullying that I was suffering, he logged it and said he would speak to the person concerned. As far as he was concerned, that was the end of the issue. Not for me and I ended up quitting.
If I had gone to him about being bullied racially, I think he would have had to deal with it properly, however that might be.

DSM, no, fair question! I think what I'm looking for (and I realise how unlikely this is!) is for someone to take it seriously enough for employers to have to consider better ways of dealing with it, not the sweep it under the carpet, 'it's their management style', move the perpetrator to a different job type of thing. But to have to deal with it in the same way as they would deal with, say, sexual harrassment or racial abuse.

Evidence (from individuals who have experienced this and from research I've read) suggests that bullying in the workplace is often down to the culture of the workplace and is more common in certain types of workplace (the NHS, for example, being a common one, although not my OH's) and I would like it to be down to the company/employer to have more responsibilities to ensure that this isn't happening in their environments.

I knwo legislation isn't the only answer, but I think it might well help to make things better by making workplaces have to look at themselves and their procedures and see where they can make improvements.

Sorry to hear about your experience wotulookinat, but it seems that most of the victims are the ones who leave, very rarely the bullies.

I guess you'd have to prove that you were being treated unfairly or differently to other ppl at the same level and grade?

But it might it not be constructive dismissal if its a boss?

I think the main problem is that bullying in adults is often hard to define. What one person may perceive as banter, another perceives as bullying.

For example;
There was a guy I used to work with. I was his boss. The nature of the environment (all guys, apart from me, long hours, at night and in a relaxed social environment) meant that there was a lot of lighthearted banter. They all teased each other, and he would get just as involved as the rest of them. However, he couldn't handle being on the receiving end.

After a few weeks, he reported to me that he felt he was being bullied.

What do you think should happen in that instance?

What has your dh done to try and end this situation? There are processes his employers should be following. Has he raised a grievance in the first instance?

Sorry for the delay in replying, computer's been misbehaving.

choc and detox - I have looked closely and taken advice on the whole issue of constructive dismissal and taking things down the grievance route and it seems like it's incredibly difficult to prove, the system takes ages and the whole thing is very stressful, which he's just not up to at the moment. As I said earlier, he really needs to want to go down these routes and at the mo he's not up to it. If the law was more exact it might help to speed the process up and make the likelihood of a satisfactory outcome higher.

DSM - difficult one, but I think that if he percieves it as bullying and feels bullied then it needs addressing with his colleagues, amybe to tone things down when he's there. It really is difficult.