Taking a collective approach to tackling bullying and harassment

Many workplace disputes are best tackled collectively, and this can be a good way of approaching some of the problems caused by bullying and poor management behaviour.

The UCU health and safety adviser’s guidance, Stopping bullying and harassment at work, explains: “Responding to a stream of individual cases of bullying can be an exhausting undertaking for UCU reps and a frustrating one for members. It is much more effective to seek to prevent bullying by having in place effective, monitored policies that are implemented from the top of the institution than by trying to represent an individual member who has already suffered bullying. To be effective such policies must include effective means for detecting, recording, reporting and dealing with breaches of the policy.”

Abusive contract manipulation — for example, being forced to accept worse terms and conditions, to work difficult shift patterns, to come to work when sick, to work on zero hours arrangements or bullying in connection with trade union activities — are all obvious examples of the sorts of issues that would benefit from a collective approach to tackling bullying, whether or not alongside a legal claim in the courts. There are plenty of other potential examples.

Taking a collective approach has a number of potential benefits including:

• building stronger union organisation at workplace level — the stronger the union presence, the better placed reps will be to support individual members;

• raising morale and empowering workers. Speaking out on behaviour issues collectively as a union sends a clear message and can make it easier for individual members to confront bad behaviour. It is especially helpful for staff who might have kept quiet because they feel insecure in their employment, for example agency workers, young or migrant workers, or new joiners;

• making it easier for the union to negotiate improved anti-bullying policies to benefit all staff, and to persuade the employer to improve management training and explore new ideas on behaviour issues;

• helping ensure that issues like bad behaviour, excessive demands, workload, stress and sickness absence are recognised as health, safety and welfare issues affecting everyone in the workplace and organisational matters that should be addressed through a joint reappraisal of working practices and culture, not issues of individual responsibility or personal “fault”;

• using union resources more efficiently by maximising their impact;

• preventing issues becoming polarised or bogged down in procedure;

• making it easier for employees to stay in work after making a complaint, by offering safety in numbers and limiting the extent to which issues are seen as “personal”;

• making it easier for a union to track whether a worker’s experience is a one-off incident or part of a wider pattern;

• helping the union highlight trends such as targeting of black or ethnic minority members or union reps.

In practice, the individual legal rights to protection from bullying summarised in Chapter 2 tend to be useful only in a minority of cases. They are also very difficult to enforce and are likely to cause long-term damage to work relationships, making it extremely difficult for a member to stay in their job.

Whatever approach is taken, union reps must respect members’ right to privacy and must never share or publicise information about an individual’s case without their clear permission.

There are lots of possible collective strategies to adopt, depending on the particular issue that needs addressing. Taking a collective approach could include, for example:

• approaching colleagues, with the member’s clear consent, to see whether others have experienced similar treatment;

• where a union is recognised, circulating an anonymised questionnaire among members of the bargaining unit to find out more about the problem;

• raising the issue with the employer’s safety committee;

• for a public sector employer (or a private sector employer carrying out public functions), reminding the employer of its Public Sector Equality Duty (public authorities must have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful harassment in the exercise of their functions) and encouraging them to carry out an equality audit of anti-bullying policies;

• considering a collective grievance (see box below);

• negotiating improvements to anti-bullying policies and securing commitments to better management training;

• encouraging the employer to take a joint approach with the union to tackling working practices linked to bullying and negative behaviour, such as excessive demands, workload, stress and sickness absence;

• learning from other unions, sharing successes, good news stories and best practice;

• wider lobbying, campaigning and demonstrating;

• as a last resort, balloting for industrial action.

The public and commercial services union PCS advises reps that if management dispute that there is an issue with bullying in the workplace, they should ask for a joint survey which will prove the matter one way or the other. The union also advocates the union and management working together to develop strategies to eliminate workplace bullying and that joint measures could include:

• a joint survey of the workforce, to identify risk areas and to set a benchmark against which progress can be measured;

• a full risk assessment to meet health and safety requirements (see below);

• developing policy and procedures, including negotiating an appropriate complaints procedure; and

• provision of counselling, training and support mechanisms.

The UCU health and safety adviser’s guidance, Stopping bullying and harassment at work, also advocates surveys as an example of an effective collective approach to tackling bullying and harassment:

“Surveys, especially if they are jointly undertaken, can be very useful in establishing the scale of bullying and drive action to improve matters… Moreover where a survey has established bullying is a significant problem, it enables UCU reps to underpin and make more credible individual complaints of bullying by arguing they are part of a wider bullying culture.

That’s why UCU branches should always try to:

• have an effective, agreed, monitored policy on bullying and harassment in place.

• ensure a local institutional survey takes place, and is repeated at regular intervals (say every two years) to establish the scale of bullying and harassment, including “hotspots”. These can help demonstrate the scale of the problem and that bullying and harassment is not confined to an individual case.

• treat bullying as a health and safety hazard using ‘risk assessment’ methods to prevent and control it.

• ensure the most senior staff in the institution state clearly their opposition to bullying and harassment and set a personal example, taking personal responsibility for ensuring the findings of surveys and remedial action are publicised and drawn to the attention of the governing body and effective preventative action is taken.”

Shopworkers’ union USDAW points out that bullying at work can have an important link to recruitment and organising and that in turn, when a workplace is well organised with a strong union presence, a bullying culture is far less likely be considered acceptable. The union has produced advice for reps, Let’s put a stop to bullying at work, which includes an organising model (www.usdaw.org.uk/Help-Advice/Health-Safety/Bullying-Harassment).