Employers are under great pressure to respond to workplace dangers By Steve Kaufer and Jurg W. Mattman Workplace Violence Research Institute Special to the Star-Bulletin SAY the words workplace violence and most people think of a rampage shooting like the one in the City of Los Angeles building, where Willie Woods opened fire with a Glock semiautomatic pistol, killing four managers. Or maybe they will think of Bruce Clark, a 22-year U.S. Postal Service veteran who shot and killed his supervisor at a mail processing facility in another Southern California city. Although deadly acts certainly pose a threat to the American worker, the berserk, disturbed worker accounts for a small percentage of occupational deaths. A much more common cause of death is robbery, which causes about 1,000 deaths from violence in the workplace each year.
Workplace violence seems to have two definitions.
The one perpetrated by the media is an armed, disgruntled employee or client who shoots selectively or indiscriminately at employees, supervisors and managers. Any act against an employee that creates a hostile work environment and negatively affects the employee, either physically or psychologically. These acts include all types of physical or verbal assaults, threats, coercion, intimidation and all forms of harassment. These figures, from a May 1995 study by the Workplace Violence Research Institute, point out the real dangers, dangers employers cannot afford to ignore. Even if employers weren't concerned with the decency factor, they should be concerned about the cost and lost productivity caused by these acts.