New York Employment Lawyer Blog

New York, New Jersey, California, and several other states want to add more protection for workers. The want stop work place bullies. Current employment discrimination laws provide narrow protection - it only bars race discrimination, sex discrimination or age discrimination etc. But what if a workplace bully does not discriminate and is just plain mean and nasty. Well, the victim is out of luck. Seems bizzare and downright arbitrary that it is ok to abuse someone unless the abuse is based on race, or sex etc... Aren't the laws supposed to protect everyone?

According to the 2003 Study of Abusive Workplaces (conducted by The Workplace Bullying and Trauma Institute), employment discrimination laws only protect victims 25% of the time. That leaves 75% of the victims of workplace abuse unprotected. That is a problem. The Study also found that women are biggest bullies as they are responsible for 58% of the workplace abuse. Women also tend to pick on other women (87% of the time a woman will bully another woman). Men, who are slightly less abusive, target women 71% of the time. Clearly the workplace is not safe for woman and both woman and men favor them as targets for abuse and the existing laws provide scant protection. But bosses are the biggest bullies as they are responsible for 81% of all workplace abuse. Look out if you are woman working for a woman boss.

The U.S. Supreme Court is the biggest problem as the black robed jurists do not favor laws that cover anything but discrimination. I guess no one abuses them. Perhaps Justice Scalia should work for a woman boss in a coal mine for a few months and then report back to us. In any event, workers need more protection and now 10 states (California, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Missouri, Kansas, New York and Montana) have introduced legislation to prevent workplace abuse. But only Hawaii has passed such a law.