Jeffrey Recht

Sep 09, 2024

With this image we are being a bit facetious. However, it does make the point that when someone is targeted, there are lasting effects on their mental psyche. They never really get over it. In fact, all that the professionals that deal in this area, just help them to cope with the mental trauma of being targeted. What we are doing actually, with this sort of abusive behavior is actually ruining the lives of our workers.

In fact in the WBI/Zogby national study of 2021 30% of all workers have faced this abusive behavior and 43 of remote workers are also getting the same abusive behavior on a regular basis. Over time, these worker face depression, suicide tendencies, heart attacks, strokes, internal Bleeding, anxiety, ulcers, PTSD, C-PTSD and Diminished Capacity. These are all real symptoms that a target will face from this behavior, if the target does not receive in their time of need. If you now figure that we have a workforce of approximately 150 million people. #0 per cent of that is roughly 45 million people, we are ruining that many lives in 2021 and we anticipate that this figure will go up in our next study that we are preparing for right now, will be higher than this last study. But that is a lot of lives. Additionally, in this group there may be some that received help while others did not.

With this is background, the number 1 labor issue right now, is Bullying in the Workplace. Unions may or may not realize it, is that they have a lot of the tools necessary to solve this issue, but need training to understand how to use those tools and also how to help the member. To understand the levels of training needed first you have to understand the typical union’s structure.

The Membership-The members are at the top of the structure. The union is a democratic organization. So the members are at the top of the Org chart.

The Stewards-these are in the workplace. The Steward is the first person that the member will go to get help or advice from regarding questions or issues that they have.

Representatives-these are the people that back up the union steward. They are trained in the grievance process, new laws and legal trends, etc. Some maybe lawyers but may not be practicing.

Organizers-These are the people that organize the membership around widely felt issues and they plan out campaigns to get a solution to member issues.

Lawyers and Paralegals-these are the people that help the members with such legal issues as Adverse Actions, Benefits, Coleman Hearings, etc.

Therefore, there has to be many different levels of training for the whole union structure can get the necessary training. There will also have to be some additions to the structure of the union is currently. These include a trauma triage call center and a team of experts. The Trauma Triage Call Center will get trained on what to look for from the member and send them to proper resource so that they can get the mental health help that they need. The team of experts will do internal training as the employees of the union turnover.

Each level will have their own training that is specific to their needs. The members will have some trainings too, primarily for how to interact with their steward and what documents and documentation that the steward will need for their case. It is worth noting that with the complaint process, each target that I dealt with, relived each and every event that they had documented when having to put it in a complaint. However, the membership still has to have this training as there are certain elements that can be critical to the member’s case.

As you can see without any new laws to outlaw this sort of abusive behavior, for an union to help their members with Bullying in the Workplace, there has to be a lot of training and some additional structures be added to the union’s structure just to solve this issue on the member’s behalf. This also does not include such managerial tricks as retaliation for filing a complaint or how to incorporate some organizing tools into the fight regarding the case. These are for another article. But as you can see, to help the unions fight this, it is a big job to get them properly trained.