Last year’s alleged bullying, via voicemails and text messages, of Miami Dolphins player Jonathan Martin by his teammate Richie Incognito, which caused Martin to leave the team, sparked a controversial debate over the fact that workplace bullying is not illegal under federal or state law.
A 2011 Monster Global Poll asked workers, “Have you ever been bullied at work?” Sixty-four percent of the 16,517 respondents answered that they had been bullied, physically hurt, driven to tears, or had their work performance affected, and 16 percent had witnessed a co-worker being bullied. In another 2011 study by the Society for Human Resource Management, incidents of workplace bullying occurred in more than 50 percent of companies, yet only 43 percent of companies reported having an “anti-bullying” policy in their employee manual.
