The Community Party in Connecticut wants to meet with State Senator Cathy Osten, the Labor and Public Employees Committee Chair, to discuss their proposed amendments to the 2013 Healthy Workplace Bill. The Community Party says that: Continue reading
Earlier this week Connecticut State Representative Brenda Kupchick introduced Bill 5236, AN ACT CREATING AN EMPLOYERS’ BILL OF RIGHTS. It consists of 3 very cryptic – yet easily decoded – sentences.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened:
That the general statutes be amended to require the Labor Department to develop and promulgate an Employers’ Bill of Rights.
Statement of Purpose:
To create an Employers’ Bill of Rights that would serve to protect employers from frivolous complaints and claims brought by employees.
Last Fall Fox Business featured a story about a union rally that wanted a second bill of rights to protect workers. One of their reporters, Kennedy, was filmed undercover petitioning for an Employers Bill of Rights. “The right to hire and fire. The right to relocate my business from anywhere to anywhere The right to determine wage levels…” Continue reading
Image via CrunchBase
A recent NLRB decision may help protect that venting you’ve been doing about your job on Facebook – so long as it falls under very specific criteria. But, it also shows how an employer can try to flip that “zero tolerance” “bullying & harassment policy” against employees. Slate summed it up this way: “The case—Hispanics United of Buffalo—started one Saturday morning in 2010. That was when domestic violence advocate Mariana Cole-Rivera took to Facebook to complain that one of her co-workers was unfairly accusing fellow employees of laziness. Several other staffers at Hispanics United of Buffalo chimed in to say they worked plenty hard already. Soon after Cole-Rivera and her co-workers returned to work, HUB fired five of them, arguing that their off-the-clock comments had violated the nonprofit’s anti-harassment policy.” The NLRB decision ruled against HUB’s use of the bullying policy for the terminations: Continue reading
“..the majority of bully-typifying traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychoticism, and the aggression measures) were associated with being a victim…”
Many surveys show that 25-35% of today’s American workforce self-report that they are suffering the devastating impact of bully bosses. But, as a new Canadian study shows, it’s not always that simple. Take for example the darker side of bullying – the Bully/Victim. Apparently some victims may share certain personality traits with their bully; disagreeableness, dominance, and aggression. And, as noted above, this includes the “dark triad” associated with bullying behavior; machiavellianism, narcissism, psychoticism. “As an example, the bully-typifying trait verbal aggression may be directly associated with the bullying of others (Parkins, Fishbein, & Ritchey, 2006). It is also, however, associated with argumentativeness (Diamond, 2005), a possible ‘annoying’ factor that may provoke others to bully those who score highly on the trait.”
Workplace safety does not receive much mainstream exposure. The vast majority of the U.S population does not know what OSHA is or what it regulates. We’re intent on changing that. In this post, we’ll analyze the $250 million dollar 90′s blockbuster Enemy of the State and NBC’s The Office for OSHA violations.A special thanks goes out to contributing safety expert Anne Evans for her assistance in creating this post.(1998) Enemy Of The State, Supply Room Scene. CLIP ENDS AT 03:20This clip is from the late 90′s blockbuster ‘Enemy of the State’. What’s especially interesting about this clip is that the management had the audacity to place a ‘Safety First’ poster in the same room as a handful of critical OSHA violations. Sadly this type of gross negligence coupled with minimal effort to create the appearance of compliance (such as a ‘Safety First’ sign) is far too common in actual workplaces. In this case, Hollywood’s depiction of workplace safety is not so different than reality. Continue reading 
Amy, played by Laura Dern, is the main character in the Golden Globe winning HBO series, Enlightened. The program’s brilliant co-creator, Mike White, often steals the show as loveable, and presumably invisible, Tyler. When the marketing team for the series contacted us with artwork and a request to help promote their show on this blog I couldn’t resist imagining what would happen if “Amy”, whose newly enlightened state leaves her with an inner need to defend the victimized, decided to advocate against workplace bullying. The way Dern & White have written her character, she would no doubt end up as both victim and perpetrator. I once had a friend who was an Ad Exec who suddenly saw the light and the crass error of his career when he spent a weekend at an EST “experience.” His marketing talent helped him quickly rise within the packaged enlightenment program. That is, until he was ousted for attacking too many disciples as not getting “it.” He was brutal in his desire to show the newbies that they could never reach his level of awareness. Amy would no doubt find bullies everywhere in her corporate walls and neglect to see that she has become one herself. Here’s an example of a storyline from season one: Continue reading
OUR BULLY PULPIT 