the recent stories of workplace violence have reportedly been the result of an employee’s
feeling intimidated at work. In research conducted in the private and public sector in
southern Saskatchewan, Céleste Brotheridge, a professor at the Université du Québec à
Montréal, found that bullying was rather prevalent in the workplace. Forty percent of
the respondents noted that they had experienced one or more forms of bullying weekly
in the past six months. Ten percent experienced bullying at a much greater level: five or
more incidents a week. Brotheridge notes that bullying has a negative effect on the work-
place: “Given bullying’s [negative] effects on employee health, it is reason for concern.”^38
There is no clear definition of workplace bullying, and Marilyn Noble, a Fredericton-
based adult educator, remarks that in some instances there can be a fine line between
managing and bullying. However, Noble, who co-chaired a research team on work-
place violence and abuse at the University of New Brunswick, notes that “when it
becomes a question of shaming people, embarrassing people, holding them up to
ridicule, just constantly being on their case for no apparent reason, then [management]
is becoming unreasonable.” Moreover, “a bully often acts by isolating an individual.
And they may be a serial bully, who always has a victim on the go. They may, in fact, have
multiple victims on the go, but their strategy is to isolate them from one another.”^39
Sexual Harassment
The issue of sexual harassment has received increasing attention by corporations and the
media because of the growing ranks of female employees, especially in nontraditional
work environments, and because of a number of high-profile cases. For example, in
March 2006, it was reported that all four female firefighters in the Richmond, BC, fire
department had taken a leave of absence, alleging that they had faced repeated sexual
harassment and discrimination from male firefighters in the department. The city has
since introduced a code of conduct for its firefighters.^40 A survey by York University
found that 48 percent of working women in Canada reported they had experienced
some form of “gender harassment” in the year before they were surveyed.^41 Sexual
harassment is also occurring among young people. A survey of 3000 high school students
from eight schools in Toronto, Montreal, and Kingston, Ontario, found that three-quar-
ters of them said they had been sexually harassed at least once by peers.^42
Barbara Orser, a research affiliate with The Conference Board of Canada, notes that
“sexual harassment is more likely to occur in environments that tolerate bullying, intim-
idation, yelling, innuendo and other forms of discourteous behaviour.”^43 Recent research
supports this view, finding that within work environments, general incivility, gender
harassment, and sexual harassment tended to occur together.^44 These behaviours indi-
cate that one person is trying to use power over another.
The Supreme Court of Canada defines sexual harassmentas unwelcome behaviour
of a sexual nature in the workplace that negatively affects the work environment or leads
to adverse job-related consequences for the employee.^45 Despite the legal framework for
defining sexual harassment, there continues to be disagreement as to what specifically
constitutes sexual harassment. Sexual harassment includes unwanted physical touching,
recurring requests for dates when it is made clear the person is not interested, and coercive
threats that a person will lose her or his job if she or he refuses a sexual proposition. The
problems of interpreting sexual harassment often surface around some of its more subtle
forms—unwanted looks or comments, off-colour jokes, sexual artifacts such as nude cal-
endars in the workplace, sexual innuendo, or misinterpretations of where the line between
“being friendly” ends and “harassment” begins. Case Incident—Damned if You Do; Damned
if You Don’ton the CD-ROM that accompanies this textbook illustrates how these prob-
lems can make people feel uncomfortable in the workplace. Most studies confirm that
the concept of power is central to understanding sexual harassment.^46 This seems to be true
whether the harassment comes from a manager, a co-worker, or even an employee.
Chapter 7Power and Politics 233sexual harassment Unwelcome
behaviour of a sexual nature in the
workplace that negatively affects the
work environment or leads to
adverse job-related consequences
for the employee.
Supreme Court of Canada
http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca