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New Jersey Considers Workplace Bullying Law

New Jersey Considers Workplace Bullying Law

Posted by: Kevin Costello

Assemblywoman Greenstein has sponsored A-1551, a bill to prevent abusive harassment and bullying in all workplaces in New Jersey, both public and private, and regardless of whether the abuse and bullying are discriminatory in nature.

    It’s about time.

    Oh, I am certain that some “employers” of the State of New Jersey and their advocates – the people that probably assume that they’re going to violate this statute on a regular basis and want immunity from doing so – will oppose this with their dying breaths.  I recently had the pleasure to debate the issue with a noteworthy employment defense attorney on NJN News and it’s very clear to me that some of the opponents of this bill don’t really care about he rights of workers, but only about their freedom to do pretty much as they please, including reducing their workers to tears and illness.

    This amazes me.

    I’m an employer.  In theory, I should be lining up with the other employers to worry about the “frivolous lawsuits” and other phantom boogie men that the employers and their conservative allies will throw into any discussion of this reasonable statue whose time has come.  Yet, I'm not lining up with them.  I wonder why?

    The cynical amongst you will say that I'm an employment lawyer, and that I stand to gain by bringing suits such as these. That's not why.  It's because I'm not an ass who plans to abuse his workers.

    The statute doesn’t prohibit just any old rude, ignorant or unpleasant remark.  It doesn’t prohibit asking for 110% from your workers.  it doesn’t prohibit asking the workers to do overtime and telling that they might lose their job if they don’t.  It doesn’t prevent setting exacting standards, nor does it even prevent favoritism, nepotism or unfairness.

    The statute is limited to dealing with severe and abusive, distressing conduct which, in fact, produces some degree of emotional distress supportable by medical expert testimony.  Below that standard, there is no cause of action under this proposed law.

    It has been my experience as an employment rights lawyer that, out of the total number of people who contact our office each week, perhaps ten percent of them have potential cases.  Of that ten percent, we decide to accept as clients perhaps half that number.

    Obviously, it is thus our statistical experience – based upon roughly seventy-five hundred inquires of this office in the just the last several years – that approximately 90% of all workplace bullying and harassment does not fall under one of the existing New Jersey laws meant to deter this conduct.  New Jersey has two very progressive worker rights statutes: the Law Against Discrimination and the Conscientious Employee Protection Act.  Yet those statutes are also very narrow.  The Law Against Discrimination certainly deters harassment, but only does so when the harassment is motivated by one of the discriminatory categories contained in the law (race, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc.).  The Conscientious Employee Protection Act only prohibits harassment which is retaliatory in nature and which is directed against someone who has engaged in “protected conduct” under the whistleblower statute which, in turn, is narrowly defined as opposing illegal conduct, opposing conduct violative of compelling public policies or which constitute fraud, or threatening to report or actually reporting such conduct, participating in investigations, and the like.

    There are some other minor and even more specific statutes in New Jersey, but those are the two big ones.  As you will see from looking at the above descriptions, most of the harassment and bullying is motivated by concerns other than discriminatory motive and other than retaliatory motive (for the conduct that the whistleblower statute addresses).

    Most of the conduct is simply because some bosses really don’t respect the dignity of their workers, and that is something I think this statute is meant to change and something which ought to change.

    Let me be absolutely crystal clear: there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for treating your work staff in a way which is so hostile, so abusive, so belittling and so designed to rob someone of their dignity that they are reduced to true psychiatric illness. Like I said at the beginning of this entry, there are far too many things the employer can still do to get what they want without also keeping on the list the most extreme conduct meant to truly wound and injure.

    The work’s compensation statutes, the opponents say, represent adequate remedies.  They don’t discuss, however, how the worker’s compensation statutes provide very small dollar figures, and are generally insufficient to compensate the person for what they endure.

    Again, as an employer, I say that the time for this statute has come, and the only people it’s going to harm are the people it’s designed to harm, the employers who, by forcing their victims to go on worker’s compensation, spread the cost of their own bad acts to all of the employers of New Jersey.  I don't think that’s fair.  If the employers of our state think about that for a while I suppose they might start to resent the fact that their own worker’s compensation rates increase as a result of abuse that they don’t themselves commit.

    Maybe it is not such a bad idea to make the abusers to pay directly after all.

    We applaud Assemblywoman Greenstein and we hope that the New Jersey legislature has the wisdom, foresight and character to make this bill law.

JOURNEY TO JUSTICE

DISCLAIMER: This web log is not legal advice, nor should it be construed to be legal advice or the offering of legal advice. It should not be read as guaranteeing or suggesting any particular outcome in any Court will occur in any particular case. It is not, and should be read as, a complete or authoritative analysis of the state of law, which is constantly subject to change.

"Journey to Justice" - The Web Log of Civil Rights Trial Lawyer Kevin M. Costello, Esq. (www.costellomains.com).