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Shortly before Christmas 2010 the press reported what can only be described as a humdinger of a harassment case before an employment tribunal. What made this one stand out was not only that the alleged ‘bullying boss’ was a woman, and the complainer a man, but that she had once been invited by former Prime Minister Tony Blair to head a task force to promote women in business. It also emerged that this boss from hell had gone through 27 personal assistants in two years!
We can fully understand why a newspaper would want to give a lot of space to a story such as this and for many readers to lap it up. Unfortunately, it might also have given the impression that harassment, or bullying in the workplace, is a relatively rare occurrence and, therefore, newsworthy. In fact, our experience is that harassment of employees is relatively common in the Scottish workplace. People are being bullied in offices, shops and factories across the country not just in an abstract sense but also in clear contravention of the 1997 Employment Act, which greatly concentrates on this issue.
Of course, not every employee who claims to be bullied is, in fact, the subject of what might be termed harassment. Cultures in the hundreds of thousands of workplaces across the country vary enormously and instructions by managers that might be seen as normal in the private sector could be considered unfair in the public sector. And, let's be honest, in any working environment you will always find people who are just not up to the job and for whom "bullying" is a convenient fallback.
When clients initially approach us with a workplace bullying issue, it is usually because they have failed to obtain satisfaction through discussions with their employer, either on their own or with a trade union representative. They may have found that talking has not led to a resolution. Their employer may have thought it was not his problem and left it to a manager with only limited powers, somewhere further down the line. Or the employer might have agreed that harassment is taking place, but for the sake of a quiet life would prefer the victim to leave rather than do anything about it. That’s when many people feel they have no option but to go to law, but because the harassment is low level (though still unsettling for anyone on the receiving end), it rarely gets into the papers.
There are, of course, those for whom going to law is even more daunting than setting off for work every day to face a bullying boss, and so they are tempted to resign, look for a job elsewhere, and move on. But there is always that nagging feeling of resentment that they’ve been denied justice, and that a workplace which allows bullying has got away with it.
Fortunately, people who do contact a solicitor with a complaint about workplace harassment are often surprised and encouraged by how much the law is on their side. Here are some extracts from the 1997 Act:
"Every individual has a right to be free from harassment and, accordingly, a person must not pursue a course of conduct which amounts to harassment of another. An actual or apprehended breach may be the subject of a claim in civil proceedings by the person who is or may be the victim of the course of conduct in question; and any such claim shall be known as an action of harassment”.
We don’t believe you need to be a lawyer to take a clear inference from these words. They mean that harassment (or permitting the harassment) of an employee in the workplace either through inappropriate forms of speech or physical conduct is against the law, and that anyone on the receiving end of such behaviour has a legal right to seek compensation. Although there are myriad cases of bullying and each is different in its own way, the law is pretty clear that anyone who has lost a job or been compelled to resign because of harassment does have a possible claim.
If this has happened to you please contact Richard Godden, Ann Scott, or Douglas Peters for a free initial discussion on 0131 222 8000. |
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