Oprah.com puts focus on workplace bullying

Oprah.com puts focus on workplace bullying, finally! – Check this out! Oprah producers are recognizing our mission and the hard work of the Workplace Bullying Institute.

California Healthy Workplace Advocates, please read this site and leave a comment. Ask that the Oprah Show go further with this important social issue and the movement so many of us have worked so long to expose.

http://www.oprah.com/article/health/wellnessandprevention/20090922-orig-workplace-bullying#startcom

Workplace Bullying can lead to "shattered core beliefs about human relationships"

Book Review: Shattered Assumptions: Towards a New Psychology of Trauma

“Why is severe, malicious workplace bullying so traumatic for many targets? A 1992 book by University of Massachusetts psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, Shattered Assumptions: Towards a New Psychology of Trauma, offers valuable insights. According to author, Janoff-Bulman, victims of intentional, malevolent harm may find that the mistreatment they experienced fractured their core beliefs about human relationships. They now face unique and difficult psychological challenges." Quoted from Dr. David Yamada's blog at:

http://newworkplace.wordpress.com/2009/07/25/why-severe-workplace-bullying-can-be-so-traumatizing/

Statistics on Suicide in the Workplace Shock Healthy Workplace Advocates!

California Healthy Workplace Advocates respectfully acknowledge today, Sept. 10, 2009, as National Suicide Prevention Day. It's difficult NOT to link workplace bullying with workplace suicides. Last month, the U.S. Department of Labor released the following statistics:

"Increase in Occupational Fatalities due to Suicide Preliminary data from the 2008 Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) program reported 251 workplace suicides, their highest level since the inception of the CFOI program in 1992. The 2008 count is 28 percent higher than the 196 suicides recorded in 2007. Further information on the increase in occupational fatalities due to suicide is available at www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/osar0010.pdf."

According to Chris Penttila, reporter for Examinier.com, "These figures don’t include employee suicides that happened away from work property, however. More than 30,000 Americans die as a result of suicide every year --- making it the fourth leading cause of death for adults ages 18 to 65, according to the Feeling Blue Suicide Prevention Council, a Pennsylvania-based organization that works both to prevent suicides and to support the people affected by them."
http://www.feelingblue.org/about-suicide/facts-figures

“Even more sobering: The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention reports that 90 Americans will kill themselves today, and 2,300 more will try.”
http://www.afsp.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewpage&page_id=050FEA9F-B064-4092-B1135C3A70DE1FDA

Will these statistics go down when states in the United States have a Healthy Workplace law? Will a law that corrects and prevents workplace bullying, much like the sexual harrassement laws we now have, prevent workplace suicides? We believe so. We believe the time has come to advance our society to the next level of humane treatment...remember the "Golden Rule"?

Healthy Workplace Bill to correct and prevent Workplace Bullying, it's time has come...

Battle over Workers’ Compensation insurance rates looms

Here we go again. The elections of next fall, which will make major shifts in political office holders, promise workers’ compensation insurance rates as a key item for debate. While the great Schwarzenegger fix of our State’s workers’ comp system kept the lid on the rates for a short while, it was very much at the expense of the workers. That would be We the People. Workers’ benefits and the chance of proving work-related injury have greatly diminished. Employers happily enjoyed reduced premiums for a while. No more. Those insurance rates are sneaking up like mites on tights and employer’s squeaking is turning into shouts of “no fair!” Maybe legislators will take California Healthy Workplace Advocates seriously now when we tell them we have a bill that will greatly reduce worker’s compensation claims. http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/capitolalertlatest/024634.html

Watch out! The governor is thinking about selling off State Fund, the compensation fund that helps pool small businesses together to get better rates. If this sale to private insurance carriers happens, small business rates for workers’ comp will go even higher. Will the Chamber of Commerce let this happen without protest? The Chamber so often hides its true colors behind the small-business-protection shield, though everyone knows that the Chamber is dominated by huge corporations. http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/2124061.html

Workplace Bullying? Arnold swinging sword on twitter...

One can tell the character of a man by the way he handles power. In this Twitter video, Arnold handles a knife to symbolize the butchering of the California budget.This video is most revealing.Those who work in the Capitol can recall clearly the bullying politicians who would throw chairs at staffers when the bullies were angry. Thank goodness the budget was signed before someone was hurt...someone in addition to the poor.

Now that the budget has been signed, many will be hurt by the cuts, including the environment which has once again been sold to large oil corporations who do not pay their fair share of taxes. These oil companies own the Chamber of Commerce and the minority politicians who refuse a Constitutional Convention. For now, minority rules because of the 2/3’s vote to pass a tax hike as it was slipped into Proposition 13 by…big oil companies, the Jarvis tax conservatives, and the Chamber.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOCHtasxmIY

Workplace Bullying link to employee's suicide

Employee commits suicide on supervisor’s porch –

Facts in this case will not likely ever be known. But read this sad, California news story and imagine what should be written between the lines. Was this man simply crazy, or was he driven crazy by ill treatment from his supervisor?
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_12957838

Society has little sympathy for those who commit suicide, despite our knowing that one can physiologically be driven to kill oneself due to psychological abuse. See what others wrote in the blog about this unsettling case. Might a Healthy Workplace Bill have prevented injury to all who were involved, including the children on both sides?
http://www.topix.net/forum/source/santa-cruz-sentinel/TSFDEHG5DNEFSG5OO

Workers are more important than money! Happy Labor Day

California Healthy Workplace Advocates agree with the original Illinois Healthy Workplace Advocate, Abraham Lincoln....as quoted here, "Capital is only the fruit of labor,
and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.
Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much
the higher consideration.”
-Abraham Lincoln
We agree! Help us pass a law to protect laborers from workplace bullying. To learn more about legislation to correct and prevent workplace bullying, go to www.bullyfreeworkplace.org. Happy Labor Day!