Is it Australian to bully the unemployed?

By Monika Baker

This was the question I asked myself at the International Workplace Bullying Conference recently held here in Adelaide. The Conference was organised by the Working Women’s Centre’s Workplace Bullying Project, UTLC and some of the unions and attended by over 250 people from Australia and overseas.
Workplace violence, harassment or bullying has only been of interest to researchers in the last ten years, and lots of work has been done during this time. Some time was spent at the conference to revisit definitions and look at who feels bullied and what the effects are. One keynote speaker from South Africa talked about the culture of violence prevalent in society, obviously a much bigger problem there than it is here. She spoke about how the culture of violence is entrenched in domestic violence, sexual assaults, schoolyard bullying and also in society’s workplaces and institutions like the police force.

Workplace bullying as any bullying or violence, needs to be highlighted because many people do not recognise when they get bullied or intimidated. Many think it is normal, part of our culture. Many think of themselves as too sensitive, weak, or too stressed, otherwise they would be able to put up with it. And the perpetrators are sometimes unaware that they are intimidating others, or they believe it is part of their job. Australia is a bit of a violent society, we are still debating whether it is o.k. to physically punish children. Violence breeds violence and bullying never ends throughout life. Unless we become aware of the costs resulting from our short-sighted violent reactions to controversy and decide to stop bullying, we will have schoolyard and workplace bullying, violence, alcohol and drug abuse, and generally, people who do not respect the rights of others.

The Economic and Social Council in France defined bullying as being “the perverse implementation of power, which is then transformed into a means of subjugation and persecution of the other, questioning his her fundamental rights together as well as the respect which is due to him or her.” 1) Is there some connection to the children overboard story here?

Stale Einarsen, a researcher from Norway, defined a person as being bullied at work if they are:
“ repeatedly subjected to negative acts in the workplace. However, to be a victim of such bullying one must also feel inferiority to defending oneself in the actual situation.”2)

Do you feel inferior in regards to Centrelink Officers or Job Network Consultants?

The New Zealand Human Rights Act 1993 defines workplace bullying in section 124 (1) as:
“an employee being subjected to workplace bullying in the employee’s employment if the employee’s employer or a representative of that employer uses language, (whether written or spoken), or visual material or physical behaviour that directly or indirectly –
a) expresses hostility to the employee
b) is offensive to the employee
c) and has, by reason of its duration, intensity, public nature or through repetition, a detrimental effect on the employee.”3)

Do these definitions ring a bell? Aren’t unemployed people constantly bullied? They are often rejected in their applications for jobs, threatened with loss of social security benefits if they miss a letter, precluded from unemployment benefits when they leave a job voluntarily due to bullying at the workplace. Who are the perpetrators in our case? Many unemployed people feel inferiority to defend themselves in the actual situation when they get breached or treated with disdain by their Job Network Consultants.

At the conference one workshop made the link to government policies which support a climate or culture of workplace bullying. Sue Murdoch ATSI Project Officer in the Northern Territory and Kerry Taylor, Co-ordinator of the Northern Territory’s Working Women’s Centre told that they had found from case studies that the equivalent of the Work for the Dole Scheme, the Community Development Employment Project CDEP may support the incidence of workplace bullying.

CDEP provides employment for Aboriginal and Torrens Strait Islander people in a range of community settings and provides mostly part time work in exchange for their social security benefits, although it seems they are paid a minimum rate of pay. However they often receive as little as $90 per week to live on due to the no-work-no-pay rules of some CDEP schemes.

There was a lack of understanding about the scheme by those who used CDEP participants and by the participants themselves. There were concerns supervisors did not follow up and often did not provide access to decision making meetings. CDEP participants were to be trained to enhance their job readiness, but had to undertake the training outside their paid working time.4)
Sue Murdoch and Kerry Taylor called the lack of information and engagement in decision making administrative bullying. I suggest to personalise it a bit more and call it politician’s bullying as they set up the legislation. There are real human beings behind these decisions!

The Spicer Report (1997) suggested that adequate and formal industrial and employee relation standards for regulatory, managerial and duty of care perspectives should be introduced for the CDEP program. UPM against Poverty Inc. wants the same for Work for the Dole.

Members of UPM against Poverty Inc. experience every day that there is such a thing as administrative bullying. The Work for the Dole scheme and in the future Community Work, as well as the whole approach to managing job search and mutual obligation can be described as administrative bullying or administrative violation.

Bullying at the workplace leads to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, heightened stress levels, depression, and generally ill health. And there is evidence of ill health among the unemployed, especially the long term, mature aged, male unemployed.

Without repeating the findings from numerous studies here, there is plenty of evidence of mental health problems, depression, a significantly shortened life span, etc. However, no study has mentioned PTSD. Apart from those people who have come from a workplace where they have been bullied and just left without resolving it, there are other unemployed people, whom I have met who clearly showed signs of PTSD. What are the signs of PTSD?

“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a psychological condition caused by the experience of traumatic events, which threaten the safety, or life of an individual. Such traumas include combat experience, torture, road accident and sexual assault.” 5)

Dr. Gary Namie from the US argues that PTSD, although referred to as caused by a single event, describes the symptoms of people who are bullied.
I argue that this also holds true for some unemployed people who became so traumatised by their treatment, that they show the same symptoms.

“In the psychiatric literature, the phenomenon of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) describes the experience of many targets. Unfortunately, the cumulative and prolonged reality of bullying is not captured in the clinical definition of PTSD that is based primarily on a single, overwhelming event. That is why there are some who argue for a different kind of category of Trauma, prolonged stress disorder. Until the definitional conflict is resolved, PTSD does adequately illustrate the three manifestations or forms that Trauma that a person can adopt (one or more):
- hypervigilance (easily startled, on guard, feeling edgy, paranoia)
- thought intrusions (nightmares, flashbacks, recurrent memories)
- aversion (numbing of thoughts, feelings, need to avoid sites of prior trauma)” 6)

Many long term unemployed people I have met have shown ‘hypervigilance’. They are over cautious, they think that any mistake may ruin their whole future, at least their future employment opportunities. Many told me they worry and cannot sleep, they go over their application letters again and again, they have to build themselves up emotionally to get through the next application. Many are scared to enter Centrelink Offices or visit their Job Network Provider, some display almost phobic attitudes about insisting on their rights.

This is all understandable in light of the fact that anyone within Centrelink can initiate a breach which leads to reduction or suspension of benefits. Centrelink’s ‘Big Brother is Watching You’ machinery works overtime, although with minimal results.

The action of administrative bullying occurs every time a Centrelink letter is received: ‘if you do not do as we tell you, you will be breached’. And the greatest threat is the Centrelink Occupational Psychologist to whom you get referred if you get upset when you insist on your rights. You may have an Oppositional Defiance Disorder and need treatment in the Personal Support Program. In your upset and confrontational state you are not employable!

Every avenue is closed off, unemployed people have to do what they are told. But who says so? Who makes the laws? Who agrees to this oppressive and anti-social legislation called the Social Security Act?

Our politicians are the perpetrators. They urgently need psychological help to overcome their urge to act and legislate as bullies. Sure, they leave the dirty work to their lackies, the public sector. They have bullying integrated in their workplace culture, otherwise they would refuse to bully their clients.

And then there are the witnesses: the unions, the party members, the helpers in distress, the neighbours and family members, all voters. When will they wake up to the fact that their silence in the face of unjustice is just as bad as perpetrating the act of bullying?

Bullying is national, society wide and entrenched to the highest level of society. But is it Australian? Or is the Australian ideology of fair go based on everyone getting a fair go at bullying others?

We know where the superbullies are, those who bully our politicians. Wonder what drives their need to be so excessively wealthy and throw humanity overboard? They too need to be stopped. And they can only be re-educated by the people. By everyone who wants to stop bullying the poor!

1) Economic and Social Council, 11 April 2001 session, Paris, page 48 found in Bukspan, E. Bullying at Work a Plague in France, submitted in Adelaide February 2002
2)Einarsen, 2002: Paper at WP Bullying Conference
3) New Zealand Human Rights Act 1993
4) Murdoch and Taylor, 2002: Paper at WPBC
5) http://www.ptsd.asn.au/
6) Namie, G., 2002: Paper at WPBC
WPBC Workplace Bullying Conference Papers, Adelaide

Greens support the 35 hour week

Contents of

Up-Words Vol.3 No 2

Contents:

Is it Australian to bully the unemployed?

Greens support the 35 hour week

Take a look at this month's additions to the Sleuth 

Click here to access our  previous newsletters:

 UpWords 1 No. 1:
 What is Breaching

 UpWords 1 No. 2:
 Young Poor under Attack

 UpWords 1 No. 3:
 Frog Boiling;

 UpWords1 No. 4::
 Welfare Reform;

 UpWords1 No. 5:
 S11;

 UpWords1 No. 6:
 History of Unemployed Movements,
 Homelessness

 Up-Words No. 7:
 Launch of UPM/Latest Breaching  Statistics

 UpWords1 No 8:
 Open Letter to Minister Amanda  Vanstone

 UpWords2 No 1:
  Millionaires' Coup for Govenrment
 Centrelink Officiouisness hurts us  all

 UpWords2 No 2:
  Big Brother is watching you!
  Work for the Dole is not working

 UpWords2 No 3:
 Globalisation - the Excessive   Wealth Disease?

 UpWords2 No 4:
 Is Howard a Communist?
 Mal Brough, Minister for  Compassionate Employment  Figure Fudging

 UpWords2 No 5
 Benefits 37% below poverty line
 May Day protests worldwide

UpWords2 No 6:
The Permanently Alienated Underclass Speaks UP!
The Budget for the Unemployed
Views from the Coal Face

UpWords 2 No 7
Criminalisation of Poverty
Job Network is not working - from rorts to incompetence

UpWords 2 No 8 
Work for the Dole can kill!
National Coalition against Poverty Petition
Post card campaign
Poet's Corner:
Views on Unemployment

UpWords 2 No 9 
UPM joins Ranks for Peace
International Day for the
Eradication of Poverty
Unemployed Treated Worse Than Criminals!

UpWords 2 No 10
Election 2001: UPM's How to Vote Card
Annual General Meeting
How much longer?

Up-Words Vol. 2 No 11
Not Drowning - Just Looking for Work
Election Aftermath: ALP Awake!
Human Rights Day Picnic
AGM

Up-Words Vol. 3 No 1
35 hour week or share Argentina's destiny?
Human Rights Day - do we count too?
State Election Issue
No 1: Jobs
My experiences with Job Network Providers

Insert in this issue:
War against Terrorism - the Police State Agenda
can be found at:
http://www.newdawnmagazine. com/articles/War_on_Terror_ The_Police_State_Agenda.html

 

 

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