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Winter 2005

July 1 - Bully's Birthday

At a time where, worldwide, workplace bullying is on the rise, John Howard is about to deliver the mother of all birthday presents to workforce bullies.

From July 1, when he gained complete control of the Federal Parliament, John Howard has promised to abolish the current unfair dismissal laws for employees working in small to medium sized businesses.

90% of working Australians, about three and a half or four million workers, will be able to be sacked, with no comeback.

Imagine it?

What will happen when someone refuses to undertake a task that is unsafe, or outside of their normal duties, or if someone refuses to work an extra night shift.

"Mate, we can always get someone else to do it" will become the bully's catchphrase. And that will be a nice boss. Many will just say "onya bike".

Whenever someone has a complaint, this law will always be in the back of their mind. Will the boss sack me?

In addition to the many people who get sacked unfairly, there will be an equal or greater number of people who will just go on working "zipping their lip".

There will be many saying nothing about unsafe working conditions, or biting their tongue when they get treated like dirt, ignoring sexual harassment, putting up with the boss ignoring award conditions.

How much will people put up with to keep their job?

Bullying is already a huge problem. The Beyond Bullying Association of Australia estimates that 2.5 to 5 million workers have been bullied at some point in their career.

That means that most of us can expect to be bullied in our working lifetime.

In the year 2000 the ACTU surveyed union members across Australia. 70% of people who said that they had been bullied, reported the bullying had been carried out by a manager. In 5% of cases the bullying had actually lead to physical assault. In 44% of cases people had taken time off and yet in only 4% of cases a workers' compensation claim was made.

The size of this problem is simply enormous. But most significantly this problem is seriously under reported. Hardly anyone pursues their rights about this issue through the normal compensating authorities.

Axing the unfair dismissal law will increase the level of bullying and increase the number of people who don't report it.

THE IMPACT OF BULLYING ON PEOPLE IS SEVERE

The impact of bullying on people is horrendous.

Obviously for those 5% of people who are physically assaulted there are physical effects of being bullied.

But in the main bullying causes stress and with this come all the difficult stress related symptoms such as headaches, depression, a lack of concentration, an increase in the rate at which mistakes are made, and an increase in the dependence upon alcohol and drugs.