NO ONE SHOULD BE A BULLY. And when your job is head coach of a NFL team, you are watched by millions of people, including little people, children who are impressionable and model the behavior of their heroes. Those kids not only watch you very carefully, they see how the players act towards you and how their fathers respond.
This is a follow-up story to the Ethic Soup post, "A Disgusting Bully: Raiders Coach Punches Assistant in Face, Fractures Jaw," about Oakland Raiders head coach Tom Cable (pictured above).
In that story I gave some props to Raiders owner Al Davis (pictured below). I may have been wrong in assuming he could be reasonable. Jay Mariotti in a Fan House post, "Cable Should Be Suspended, Davis Should Simply Vanish," relates how the Raiders last head coach Lane Kiffin was Davis' "personal whipping boy in a running soap opera that exploded into an early-season dismissal." Mariotti, who knows so much more than I do about football, related a number behaviors which have earned Davis rights to the bully descriptor.
We don't normally think of the National Football League and team headquarters as a workplaces; but, of course, they are for thousands of workers, players and coaches.
Workplace bullying is a substantial problem of epidemic proportions, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute. The institute partnered with Zogby International, sponsored by the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention, to conduct the first representative study of adult Americans on the topic of workplace bullying.
There were 7,740 interviews conducted to create a representative sample of American adults in August 2007.
KEY FINDINGS:
- 37% of U.S. workers --or 54 million -- have been bullied: 13% currently and 24% previously
- Most bullies are bosses (72%)
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Most perpetrators are men (60%) than are women (40 %)
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Most targets (57%) are women
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Women bullies target women (71%); men target men (54%)
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Bullying is 4 times more prevalent than illegal discriminatory harassment
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62% of employers ignore the problem
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45% of targets suffer stress-related health problems
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40% of bullied individuals never tell their employers
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Only 3% of bullied people file lawsuits
Prevalence
37% of the U.S. workforce (an est. 54 million Americans) report being bullied at work; an additional 12% witness it. 49% of workers. Simultaneously 45% report neither experiencing nor witnessing bullying. Hence, a silent epidemic.
A Different Kind of Harassment
Bullying is 4 times more common than harassment (based on illegal discrimination). In only one of five bullying cases does discriminatory conduct play a role.
Bullying Damages Employee's Health
The mythology surrounding bullying is that targets complain and litigate frequently. However, 45% of targets had stress-related health problems. WBI 2003 found that targeted individuals suffer debilitating anxiety, panic attacks, clinical depression (39%) and even post-traumatic stress (PTSD, 30% of women; 21% of men).
In addition, once targeted, a person has a 64% chance of losing the job for no reason. Despite the health harm, 40% never report it. Only 3% sue and 4% complain to state or federal agencies.
TO READ "FOR TOM CABLE'S LOVE OF WOMEN: HIT'EM AGAIN, HARDER, HARDER" CLICK HERE.
TO READ "BULLIES MAY BE WIRED IN BRAIN TO ENJOYOTHERS PAIN" CLICK HERE.
TO READ "A DISGUSTING BULLY: RAIDERS COACH PUNCHES ASSISTANT AND FRACTURES JAW" CLICK HERE.
by Sharon McEachern
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