Harassment

Mental health injuries

Topics: 
Harassment, PTSD, Mental health injuries, Self-help
Rating: 
0

Many whistleblowers experience harassment and other reprisals that threaten their careers and their livelihood. The stresses that these assaults cause are intolerable and often lead to permanent, debilitating psychological injuries, with symptoms similar to post traumatic stress disorder: chronic depression, insomnia, nightmares and flashbacks, and panic attacks. Some whistleblowers are so devasted by their experience that they resort to suicide.

Few whistleblowers are completely unscathed and even those who suffer no reprisals at all often report that the experience was one of the most stressful of their lives – in part because of uncertainty over the outcome and what might go wrong.

Workplace Harassment and Bullying

Topics: 
Harassment, Self-help
Rating: 
4

When whistleblowers find themselves in conflict with their bosses, they may be subjected to many different forms of reprisal.

Occasionally they may be fired abruptly without explanation, but in countries that have labour laws this is rare: the employer is likely to use more subtle methods, making it difficult to fight back or even to prove that reprisals have taken place.

 

A three-year battle for justice

Topics: 
PSIC, Mario Dion, Harassment
Rating: 
0

April 18, 2013

A three-year battle by a USGE/PSAC member has led to a guilty verdict of gross mismanagement against the former Chairperson of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. According to the Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, Ms. Shirish Chotalia, a Harper appointee as Chairperson of the CHRT, committed acts of harassment, discrimination and abuse of power.

The OPSIC writes that "…she repeatedly harassed and abused employees and members of the CHRT, demonstrated improper behaviour and made inappropriate remarks in the workplace, disregarded essential advice from her staff…"

Will fashion’s whistleblower be silenced?

Topics: 
Workplace conditions, Harassment, Whistleblowers
Rating: 
4

Adam Sherwin – April 5, 2013

Her minions at Australian Vogue called her “the Devil wears Witchery”. Anna Wintour “never gave her the time of day”. She must be a “bitter” ex-employee, out for revenge. Now Kirstie Clements, one of the industry's most influential figures, is steeled for the worst the fashion world can throw at her after she revealed the shocking lengths to which models will go to remain catwalk-thin.

Clements, who was sacked as editor-in-chief of Vogue Australia last May after 25 years with the magazine, has become the “Bradley Manning of the fashion world” after publishing a scathing inside account of a business in which the pressure to stay thin is so intense that some models eat tissues to stave off hunger pangs.

Tories put public servants’ sick leave in sights

Topics: 
Workplace conditions, Harassment, Health care, Mental health injuries
Rating: 
3

Kathryn May – March 14, 2013

Canada’s public servants are bracing for sweeping changes to their sick leave and disability insurance as the government looks to save millions in rising benefit costs and beef up the wellness and productivity of the workforce.

It’s expected money for the overhaul, which Treasury Board bureaucrats have been working on for several years, will be announced in next week’s budget.

House Status of Women Committee hears shocking testimony from former female Mountie

Topics: 
RCMP, Harassment
Rating: 
3
Robert Paulson

Jessica Bruno – March 11, 2013

For the first time since it started its study on harassment in the federal workplace six months ago, the House Status of Women Committee heard directly from a former Mountie who was sexually abused by her colleagues and bosses in the RCMP. It may be the only first-person testimony the committee hears on the topic due to restrictions it has put on its own witness list.

“I didn’t realize I was the only face,” said former Mountie Sherry Lee Benson-Podolchuk, who testified by video conference from Winnipeg March 7 about her 20 years with the RCMP, during which she said she was raped, sexually harassed, threatened, and ostracized by her colleagues and boss.

Zabia Chamberlain: ‘That’s my whole life they took’

Topics: 
Harassment, Government ethics, PSLRB
Rating: 
3
Zabia Chamberlain

How bullying and inaction destroyed a public service career

Don Butler – February 8, 2013

Zabia Chamberlain’s nightmare began in October 2007 when she accepted an executive job at Human Resources and Skills Development Canada’s national headquarters at Place du Portage in Gatineau.

Within days, her new boss, a director general at HRSDC, began a pattern of bullying and harassment that ranged from profane shouting and door-slamming to uninvited physical contact. Within eight months, his behaviour had driven her out of the workplace, terrified and traumatized. She hasn’t been back since.

Internet pioneer found dead amid prosecutor 'bullying'

Topics: 
USA, Harassment, Reprisals
Rating: 
3
Aaron Swartz

Zach Carter, Ryan Grim and Ryan J. Reilly – January 12, 2013

Open democracy advocate and internet pioneer Aaron Swartz was found dead Friday in an apparent suicide, flooding the digital spectrum with an outpouring of grief. He was 26 years old.

Swartz spent the last two years fighting federal hacking charges. In July 2011, prosecutor Scott Garland working under U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, a politician with her eye on the governor's mansion, charged Swartz with four counts of felony misconduct -- charges that were deemed outrageous by internet experts who understood the case, and wholly unnecessary by the parties Swartz was accused of wronging.

MPs aren’t getting full story on RCMP workplace harassment

Topics: 
Harassment, RCMP, Legislation
Rating: 
4

Chris Plecash – November 26, 2012

Members of the House Standing Committee on the Status of Women are getting a “sanitized version” of how the RCMP deals with claims of harassment by its own officers, says a former Mountie who reached an out of court settlement with the RCMP in 2009.

“From my perspective, they really need to see the faces of the victims,” Sherry Benson-Podolchuck told The Hill Times. “You need to have a face of what a victim looks like, and then you really get the impact of how much damage is done to somebody who suffers from harassment.”

‘Disturbing’ level of harassment in the federal public service

Topics: 
Harassment
Rating: 
3

Elizabeth Thompson – Oct 17, 2012

Nearly one in three federal public servants report they have been harassed at work over the past two years and in at least one government agency that level stands at more than 50 per cent, an analysis by iPolitics reveals.

The analysis of the latest Public Service Employee Survey, conducted in 2011, found that 51 per cent of employees at Indian Oil and Gas Canada said they had experienced harassment on the job — 53 per cent of women and 40 per cent of men. That was a sharp increase from the already high level of 44 per cent reported in the last survey in 2008.

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