City of Tuscaloosa adopts policy against workplace bullying

Reprinted from FOX 6, Oct 15, 2014 3:34 PM EDT

Tuscaloosa city hall

The Tuscaloosa City Council has approved a new policy against workplace bullying which applies to all City of Tuscaloosa employees.

The City’s legal department says the policy covers things that were not already clearly covered by the city’s anti-harassment policy.

Senior Associate Attorney Jimbo Woodson says the policy identifies bullying as intentional, hostile, abusive behavior that makes an employee no longer want their job.

“It wasn’t that many years ago that employers were adopting for the first time sexual harassment policies, then that became anti-harassment policies, and I think this is a natural extension to bullying, to essentially catch all of the inappropriate workplace behavior,” Woodson said.

Woodson also says the policy applies to a number of different scenarios.

“Not only does it direct co-workers, a co-worker who is bullying another co-worker, or a supervisor who is bullying someone they supervise, but it actually could be a group of workers who bully their supervisor,” he said. [full article]