CA law requires supervisor training on bullying

Ater Wynne LLP
NW Law frim

California recently became the second state to pass a law acknowledging the problem of workplace bullying. The first state to do so was Tennessee.

Effective January 1, 2015, California’s existing law mandating sexual harassment training for supervisors must include training on the prevention of abusive conduct. For the purpose of the new California law, “abusive conduct” means

conduct of an employer or employee in the workplace, with malice, that a reasonable person would find hostile, offensive, and unrelated to an employer’s legitimate business interests. Abusive conduct may include repeated infliction of verbal abuse, such as the use of derogatory remarks, insults, and epithets, verbal or physical conduct that a reasonable person would find threatening, intimidating, or humiliating, or the gratuitous sabotage or undermining of a person’s work performance. A single act shall not constitute abusive conduct, unless especially severe and egregious.

Tennessee’s law, passed earlier this year, requires the Tennessee advisory commission on intergovernmental relations (TACIR) to create by March 15, 2015, a model policy for employers to prevent abusive conduct in the workplace. Employers who adopt the TACIR or an equivalent policy are immune from suit for any employee’s abusive conduct that results in negligent or intentional infliction of mental anguish.

Since 2003, 26 states have introduced some version of the Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB), the anti-bullying legislation being promoted by social psychologist Gary Namie and his wife, who was a victim of workplace bullying and, thereafter, suffered from depression. To date, no states have enacted the HWB. However, recognizing the serious harmful effects of bullying, many schools have already implemented anti-bullying policies. It may just be a matter of time before anti-bullying legislation extends to the workplace.

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