workplace bullying – RI Future

This marks the fifth year since Andrew Winters was disappeared from URI. Yiddish scores much higher on the scale of colorful curses than American English and, growing up, I occasionally heard the curse “yemach shemoy—may his name be erased!” That is exactly what happened to Andrew Winters at URI: his name and memory have been obliterated. Meanwhile, state leadership have circled their wagons and restorative justice remains sorely absent.

Almost five years ago, when the Providence Journal was still a local newspaper, Bob Kerr wrote one of his famous columns, one headlined “Mysterious end to career of helping:”

Andrew Winters did good and important work at the University of Rhode Island that few others could do. He helped students come in from some very cold places. He worked to change attitudes that often took the form of hard and hateful things yelled from car windows or scrawled on doors.

Two of URI’s former students have not forgotten and shared their dismay in this month’s issue of Options, Rhode Island’s free LGBTQ Community Magazine.

One letter to the editor is from a former URI psychology student, Gary Burkholder, who received a Distinguished Achievement Award from the URI Alumni Association in 2014—see page 12 of Options.

After writing about his experience with Andrew’s work at URI, which “greatly contributed to the evolution of the LGBT climate on the University of Rhode Island Campus,” Gary ends with:

Some day the full story will be told and he [Andrew] will be an unquestionable and integral part of it.

The letter to the editor on the facing page 13 is by Aja VanDyke, another former URI student. She starts by mentioning:

September 2016 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the inception of the URI GLBT Center; Rhode Island’s first campus center for LGBTQ people. The Center was established to provide education, advocacy and support, and it did so for students, faculty, and other Rhode Islanders.

The community center no longer exists on the URI campus in Adams Hall. Andrew Winters, the man who created it, was bullied out of his career …

Aja ends with:

Many of us see the retaliation that has been done to Andrew and Don [his husband] because of their LGBT advocacy, including the continuing official coverup, as a hate crime.

You can read the full letters in Options.

Of course, there is nothing mysterious about the coverup, nor about the fact that URI President Dooley welcomed an investigation in public, while he squashed it behind the scenes. Whether it is workplace bullying, 38 Studios, or the “unexpected” failure of the Keable/Fogarty Burrillville power plant bill, that’s how we do the People’s business in Rhode Island.

Let me end on a positive note and wish Jen Stevens the best of luck as she departs Options as Editor in Chief. Thank you, Jen, for your dedication and hard work!

Recently we have been contacted by Jessica Stensrud, who is working tirelessly to champion an anti-bullying bill that would create further support for employees being harassed on the job. She has prepared an essay that we share here. To get involved in this issue, contact Ms. Stensrud at jstensrud@alumni.cmu.edu.

When I try to think like most people who haven’t experienced workplace bullying or deny that it even exists, I imagine that when they hear “The Healthy Workplace Bill,” it can sound sort of naïve or even Pollyanna-ish (if that’s even a word). “What? People need a law in place to FORCE them to be NICE? And what is ‘nice’ anyway? What about competitiveness, aggressive go–getter stuff; all that? Isn’t that normal in business? If you ruled that out, what would you have? A bunch of powder puffs trying to get stuff done.”

No, what I am talking about is there being a law that prevents deliberate acts of complete and intentional cruelty above and beyond anything to do with work. Often times, employees’ time is spent trying to comply with orders that are given, when bullying is taking place, that have nothing whatsoever to do with productivity or the success of the company. It is torture for the sake of torture.

Some people literally cannot seem to help themselves resist abuses of power. Just because they can. Or for deep psychological issues they never came to terms with and never want to. Or because someone else is bullying them from the top.

No one should have to go to work in fear that one of these types of people will be playing a cat and mouse game with them – sometimes for years on end. Companies should want to develop a culture where all peoples’ ideas are valued and their work time is honored and respected, not spent redoing a spreadsheet 15 times just because someone feels good torturing them, for instance; sabotaging their work, accusing them falsely of things, writing them up just because they don’t like them.

A healthy work culture is a lot more than having a game room. It means not living in fear that you will be called into a private room where you are excoriated verbally and sometimes physically, but you take it because you need that job and jobs are hard to find.

Statistics show that women get bullied more than men, but I personally find that hard to believe. Most men that I know of endure coming-of-age bullying that starts in kindergarten if not earlier that only gets worse as it is spoken of – so it runs deep into the bone. The only way to overcome bullying in that environment is literally to beat that person up! This is MORE bullying!

Girls are learning this as well now. I suppose all bullying of every kind cannot be totally stopped, but many countries are pressing for change in school to identify bullying especially as, if unchecked, it can result in terrible carnage when guns are involved. We also now have cyber bullying where students are tortured to the point of suicide. To my knowledge, no one has done any study to find out if workers who “go postal” were bullied, but I digress.

The point is our society values strong, tough guy managers who yell and scream and “get things done” using any means necessary without studying the impact on employees’ well-being or productivity. Imagine studying what work would be like if there were no yelling, screaming, pushing and shoving.

The Healthy Workplace Bill seeks to give bullied employees legal recourse as there is no law against this type of harassment on the books currently in any state. It also encourages companies to take a look at their work culture and take proactive steps to both avoid lawsuits and create a productive work culture where people are valued for the work they perform because they feel valued, included and motivated by respect.

For more information about the Healthy Workplace Bill, please visit their website here.

Have a look at information from the Workplace Bullying Institute, the creation of Drs. Gary and Ruth Namie, visit their website here.

What I need most are “coalition partners” or those who will demand from their legislators that this bill be introduced and voted into place.

I am working on finding a sponsor to introduce the bill when the RI Legislature reconvenes in January.

Massachusetts is the first state in the country to have the bill so favorably received – they have had three positive legislative hearings and are close to having it voted into law. Many people work and live interchangeably in these two states so it would be wonderful if Rhode Island could also enact this law.

Tag: workplace bullying

URI has failed to erase Andrew Winters’ name

On bullying in the workplace with guest writer Jessica Stensrud