Dispute Resolution and Workplace Violence

Tia Schneider Denenberg, Richard V. Denenberg,
Mark Braverman and Susan Braverman

On November 8, 1991, Thomas McIlvane, a discharged United States Postal Service letter carrier, received a telephone call, informing him that he had lost his arbitration case. After more than a year of proceedings, his termination had been upheld.¹ A few days later, armed with a loaded semiautomatic rifle, McIlvane entered the Main Post Office in Royal Oak, Michigan, from an unsecured rear loading dock. He strode purposefully through the building, climbing the stairs to the management offices on the second floor. Seeking out supervisors who had been responsible for his discipline, McIlvane fired more than 100 rounds, hitting eight people before taking his own life. Four of his victims died.

The massacre at Royal Oak no doubt can be traced to a complex of causal factors, but it is worth asking: Did the system for resolving disputes play a part in this tragedy? Could it be related to the parties' failure to head off the looming disaster?

These questions are important because eruptions of murder and mayhem, as well as lesser expressions of anger and hostility, are everyday events in America's plants and offices. When employees fear for their safety in the course of the workday, there is a cumulative toll in heightened insecurity and lowered productivity. This article analyzes the violence phenomenon and proposes a strategy based on collaborative problem solving coupled with the innovative use of dispute resolution skills to help prevent critical incidents and facilitate planning for emergencies. The goal is to transform the "crisis-prone" workplace into a "crisis-prepared" organization, concepts that will be explored below..

The issue of violence has been propelled to the forefront of the workplace agenda by events like Royal Oak. The Michigan shooting was part of the infamous series of multiple slayings by Postal Service employees that took the lives of more than 35 persons in the last ten years. But there is no reason to believe that only post offices are at risk. A survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found that one third of workplaces sampled had seen a violent incident in the previous five years. Three quarters of the incidents involved fistfights and fully 17 percent involved a shooting.²

In an insurance industry survey, one out of four workers reported being harassed, threatened or physically attacked on the job in the previous 12 months.³ Moreover, more than half of 500 human resource managers surveyed by the American Management Association reported incidents or threats of violence in their companies in the previous four years. Thirty percent of the managers reported multiple occurrences.⁴

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) calculated that 6,965 work-related homicides occurred from 1980 to 1988.⁵ Some incidents appear to be a deliberate assault on the hierarchy of the workplace, rather than random slaughter. In July, 1995, a Los Angeles Police Department maintenance employee whose performance had been criticized shot to death four persons in his agency. Each was a carefully selected target: a department supervisor.⁶ Human resources managers are commonly victims,⁷ and women are particularly likely to be targeted.⁸

Gun-wielding killers like McIlvane are the most dramatic manifestation of the phenomenon. But fatal violence is still relatively rareaccounting for less than four percent of all documented incidents. Nevertheless, much lies below the iceberg tip that fatalities represent. In many workplaces resentment and aggression routinely displace cooperation and communication. Hostility surfaces as threats, intimidation, harassment, stalking and sub-lethal assault. Advanced information technology has brought with it anonymous "cyberstalking," an electronic form of harassment. Some employees are chronically in conflict with supervisors and fellow workers, or bent on retaliating for discipline or perceived slights. Domestic abuse, as well as simmering ethnic, linguistic and cultural rivalries, may disrupt the workplace. And workers sometimes become embroiled with non-employees, such as customers.

Cal/OSHA, the influential California state safety agency, has formulated a threefold classification of violent incidents. Type I, which accounts for most lethal violence, results from crimes committed by intruders, such as burglary and robbery. Type II is violence perpetrated by non-employeescustomers, clients, patients or studentswith whom workers deal every day. Type II also includes the domestic sphereviolence or a threat against a spouse or partner that intrudes into the workplace. Type III is internecine violence: one worker attacking another.⁹

Type II incidents are by far the most common, but the Type II and Type III varieties share a significant trait: they are acts committed by persons with whom a worker interacts routinely. Unlike the crimes perpetrated by intruders, Type II and Type III violence arises from continuing relationships.

Sources of Violence

Many of the conditions that prevail in today's workplace seem to breed critical incidents. Among them are:

1. Competitive Pressures. Relentless, global market forces demand constant changes in methods of production and workplace organization. Employees find themselves having to perform in new ways and more efficiently. Team production methods introduce novel demands. Mandatory overtime, fatiguing production goals and erratic scheduling may intensify the pressure. Shift schedules can disrupt circadian rhythms and family responsibilities, while monotonous tasks and "lean and mean" styles of work organization may also take their toll.¹⁰ In addition, privacy has been eroded by electronic surveillance on the job, drug testing and computerized performance monitoring. Abrasive co-workers or autocratic supervisors create additional stresses.

   Ubiquitous threats of mergers, takeovers and mid-life "career crash" feed anxieties that may elicit hostility. In an era of mass layoffs, fear of unemployment forces workers to remain in jobs that strain their ability to adapt. Once regarded as long-term assets, whose loyalty was cultivated, employees have become liabilities, to be shed whenever possible or turned into "contingent" workers. A prominent modern historian has observed that an

   unprecedented sense of personal economic insecurity . . . has suddenly become the central phenomenon of life in America, not only for the notoriously endangered species of corporate middle managers, prime targets of today's fashionable "downsizing" and "re-engineering," but for virtually all working Americans except tenured civil servantswhose security is resented.¹¹

   The long-term consequences of such insecurity may be overwhelming psychological stress and even trauma, leading to hostility and outbursts of violent or bizarre behavior. Shrinkage of social supports, affecting child care, health care, and mental health prevention, mean that many come to the workplace already stressed and perhaps suffering from untreated mental or substance abuse disorders.

2. Loss of Autonomy. Authoritarian management styles and an absence of "decisional latitude"¹² for workers can produce an oppressive atmosphere and measurable health risks. Workers in high-demand, low autonomy jobs exhibit more stress-related illness than other workers.¹³ Even the physiology of low-autonomy workers is affected: their blood pressure is permanently elevated, according to medical researchers.¹⁴
3. Changing Workforce Demographics. Growing ethnic, linguistic, cultural and gender diversity is likely to foster inter-group tension. One factor is the accelerating pace of immigration. The percentage of the foreign-born in the U.S. population has doubled since 1970 and now stands at the highest rate in almost 60 years (8.7 percent). In heavily-impacted regions, the proportion is much higher: nearly 25 percent of Californians, for example, were born outside the U.S. This phenomenon is radically altering the demographics of the workplace and increasing the risk of pervasive inter-group tension on the shop floor.

   Even a modest-sized company in California may have dozens of nationalities, mainly recent immigrants, on its payroll. Regrettably, there is reason to fear that diversity may result in divisiveness. Whereas dispute resolution theory has focused largely on conflict between a majority group and a minority group, recent survey research has found that "many minorities agreed with negative stereotypes of other minority groups even though they shared the sting of discrimination by the majority."¹⁵ To prevent strife among linguistic groups, some employers have felt compelled to promulgate "English-only" rules.¹⁶ In the absence of strong integrating forces, such as vibrant unionism, the workforce could become ethnically or culturally Balkanized.

4. Domestic Dysfunction Overspill. Family discord, domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse, and other social ills intrude into the workplace. An abusive domestic environment has been a particular liability to female workers. In a typical example, a secretary for a telephone company was discharged because her boyfriend repeatedly threatened to attack her at work, terrifying her co-workers and disrupting the office. In December, 1995, a woman was shot to death in the middle of her shift at a Detroit auto plant; the culprit was a male co-worker with whom she had a relationship.

   According to the U.S. Department of Labor, "Seventy four percent of employed battered women are harassed by their abusive partners at work, causing 54 percent to miss at least three full days of work a month and 20 percent to lose their jobs."¹⁷ These figures do not take into account battering that is unreported to employers due to the absence of guaranteed protection and counseling. Only a few corporations have adopted protective policies. Delegates to the 1995 convention of the AFL-CIO called upon unions to deal with "instances where member's personal safety and job security are threatened as a result of being subject to domestic violence."¹⁸ In the main, however, the extent of domestic overspill and the toll on health, productivity and morale has yet to be fully recognized.

5. Victimization by Non-Employees. As part of their duties, many employees are regularly in contact with non-employees who for one reason or another may become violent or assaultive. An informal survey of union representatives in one region (the South) found:

   The most serious incidents so far have occurred in those workplaces with public contact. Grocery store clerks reported armed robberies, countless scuffles with shoplifters, and assaults over price disputes. Teachers and health care workers reported assaults by students and patients. Librarians reported incidents involving gang members, displaced mental patients, and homeless patrons. Many of these episodes involved weapons or excessive physical force.¹⁹

   A vivid example occurred in 1995, as a major northeast retail chain was declaring bankruptcy. When the chain abruptly stopped giving refunds for defective merchandise, outraged customers flung VCRs and other appliances at store clerks, inflicting bruises.

   Public sector employees, especially those who deliver social services in this era of fiscal restraint, are especially vulnerable to outbursts of anger. According to a union that represents such employees:

   More depressed, unstable, and desperate people are waiting in longer lines to talk to fewer workers who have less time to dispense dwindling services and reduced benefits. The result is frustrated clientsclients who may already be unemployed, depressed, homeless and, possibly mentally ill. Some, understandably, become violent.²⁰

   In 1992, four employees of the county social service department in rural Watkins Glen, New York, were shot to death by a "deadbeat dad" who was enraged about the garnishment of his wages.²¹

   The prevention of violence affecting workers is one of today's most pressing policy issues. The issue challenges employment specialists to develop a catalogue of best practices for dealing with an incipient crisis and to devise methods of dispute resolution that can deal effectively with conflict among workers and between employees and non-employees. Ways must be found to improve workplace safety without stumbling over the legal and collective bargaining rights of workers.

Anatomy of a Disaster

As an illustration of the dynamics of a workplace disaster, the Royal Oak incident deserves close examination. A threshold question that might be asked is: why was the grievant hired in the first place? Before joining the Postal Service, which gives preference to veterans, McIlvane had been a U.S. Marine. Owing to a military practice of sanitizing discharge records, postal authorities were evidently unaware that his career as a soldier was marred by insubordination, use of foul and aggressive language in speaking to superiors, and acts of violence against persons and equipment. He had been disciplined repeatedly; the penalties included a three-month incarceration.

Beginning in early 1988, a few years after he had been hired by the Postal Service, McIlvane was often in conflict with authority. He became insubordinate and insolent. Incidents, involving both behavioral and performance problems, resulted in a variety of disciplinary penalties. The incidents included an alleged assault on a customer, which launched an investigation by the Postal Inspection Service, the agency's security force; safety violations involving his vehicle, which led to a 14-day suspension; throwing a pencil at a supervisor during an argument; and subjecting a female supervisor to a volley of epithets and threats. There is an indication in his record that he had a fitness-for-duty examination that included a psychiatric component, but it is not clear why the examination was ordered. On August 8, 1990, a Removal Noticein effect, a dischargewas issued. The triggering incident was an episode of "profane threats and insubordination," involving three supervisors. He filed a grievance against the notice.

During the next 15 months, while the discharge case was pending, more than 20 threats were documented. For example, the grievant phoned his former manager, saying, "You are the one who got me fired . . . . I'm going to be watching you, and I'm going to get you." At an unemployment compensation hearing several days later, McIlvane said to a supervisor, "You might win today, but I'm going to get you." At another point, McIlvane crumpled a form and threw it in the face of an office worker. He then told a manager, "I'm going to come up there and kill you."

At the arbitration hearing, the grievant denied making the remarks attributed to him in the notice and argued that he had been singled out unfairly for discipline. In his opinion, however, the arbitrator found that the grievant had made "threatening and obscene statements" to supervisors:

They were not uttered in a casual or joking manner and did not constitute mere "shop talk." Rather his statements were both insubordinate and intimidating . . . .

The arbitrator continued:

By his own actions, the grievant has rendered himself unfit for continued employment. Efforts to rehabilitate him through progressive discipline and counseling failed prior to his discharge, and just cause existed under [the collective bargaining agreement] for his removal as an employee of the Postal Service.²²

Although confined mainly to behavior prior to termination, the opinion closed with the observation that the grievant's "conduct following the discharge certainly will not allow this arbitrator to return him to employment." That was evidently a reference to McIlvane's post-dismissal remarks about what he would do if he lost the arbitration.

A Pivotal Event

The massacre at Royal Oak was a pivotal event for the Postal Service. It dramatically thrust the agency into the public eye and created two enduring popular images of the service. The first was that of the "disgruntled postal worker"angry, stressed to the breaking point, and ready to react with murderous violence if pushed too far. The second, interlinked image is that of authoritarian management presiding over an abusive, sadistic system. Sullen workers, the theory holds, are likely to erupt without warning in retaliatory violence against oppressive supervisors.

Neither of these images is more than a caricature. Post offices are not uniquely populated by a high density of on-the-edge personalities, nor are they crucibles of management dysfunction and worker oppression. Flagrant events like Royal Oak cannot be ascribed to such simplistic notions. But the Michigan outrage is striking in that the grievant was able to carry out his threats, made before and after the discharge, without any joint effort by the parties to address the potential for violence, even though they had a mutual interest in the safety of the workforce.

Reasons for Inaction

What accounts for the inaction? One reason seems to have been the poor relationship between management and labor at Royal Oak. A breakdown in communication engendered over-reliance on the formal grievance system. Even trivial disputes might end up in arbitration.²³

Union. Some in the bargaining unit were disposed to view McIlvane's anger as an understandable, albeit extreme, response to heavy-handed supervisors; they grasped the opportunity to confront management. Even those union representatives who were disturbed by the threats believed that it was their legal and moral duty to be the grievant's advocate; they were paralyzed by mistrust of management and a mistaken belief that they were obligated to keep information about his propensities confidential.

Management. Managers, too, were encumbered by adherence to a narrowly conceived role. They believed that invoking the conventional disciplinary procedure was a sufficient response to McIlvane's misconduct. Postal inspectors were reluctant to become involved because they believed that they were too often asked to respond to so-called behavioral emergencies that should have been handled by the labor-management relations staff. Already stretched to the limit in carrying out their security responsibilities, inspectors believed that the employment specialists once more were "crying wolf."

Arbitrator. The arbitrator alluded to the grievant's potential for violence, mentioning the post-discharge threats in the decision upholding the termination. But a neutral, too, is circumscribed by his professional role, even though he may well be a potential target. Maintaining impartiality requires a certain distance from the contending parties. The formal issue is whether the grievant should continue to be employed, but in the background may lurk even more crucial questions. Is the grievant a menace to himself and others, regardless of his employment status? Do threats require that steps be taken to warn or protect possible targets? These questions typically are not submitted to the arbitrator and go unanswered.

Although the participants may act conscientiously within the framework of an arbitration proceeding, each is isolated in a narrowly defined role. The adversarial nature of the process, from discipline to arbitration, obscures the mutual interest in workplace safety and thwarts practical consideration of menacing behavior.

Avoiding Tragedy

Could Royal Oak have been avoided? It is impossible to know with certainty, but there can be no doubt that a few years later the same threats would have been handled quite differently. As a result of a joint labor-management accord in that Postal District and many others, carefully designed violence prevention plans were put in place. They were typically administered by a trained team of management and bargaining unit members, who had the full support of their leadership. The plans were designed to be effective at any level of threat, from mild to acute. When a threat of violence is alleged or reported under such a system, the response is radically different from that which occurred in Royal Oak.

If an employee speaks or behaves in a threatening manner in the workplace, he or she is confronted by the team, which investigates the alleged threat and, if warranted, requests that the employee meet with a threat assessment specialist. The specialist is a mental health professional who conducts a clinical interview and gathers collateral information from supervisors, co-workers and family members. Until all the facts are gathered, the employee is placed on administrative leave with pay, effectively deferring any possible discipline. The results of the assessment are shared with the team and the employee.

This approach integrates the processes of discipline and medical/psychological assessment into a single, comprehensive effort to make a well-informed judgment about the risk posed by the employee. The entire procedure is transparent, and neither party withholds information for tactical advantage, as happens in adversarial proceedings. It is likely that such a comprehensive investigation of McIlvane's threats would have uncovered his military record and other evidence that he was potentially out of control. Whereas the Postal Service ineffectively disciplined McIlvane over an eight-year period, contributing to the escalation of his dangerous behavior, the team intervention would have come at an early stage.

Crisis-Prone vs. Crisis-Prepared

In analyzing the Royal Oak incident, it is worth noting that some workplaces are more likely than others to experience violence. The difference has been conceived by crisis management specialists as a polarity between "crisis-prone" and "crisis-prepared" organizations.²⁴ A crisis-prepared organization:

1. Maintains effective systems for collecting, reporting and analyzing signs of distress at an early stage.
2. Cultivates a sense of mutual interest among stakeholders, including unions, in responding effectively to incipient strains.
3. Develops and fully disseminates in advance a policy for dealing with potential and actual crises.
4. Encourages a climate in which employees feel free to communicate their distress to management and management accepts a responsibility to respond.
5. Does not deny problems or seek to avoid dealing with them by expelling or suppressing "deviants."

Transforming an organization from crisis-prone to crisis-prepared may require profound changes. Most employers65 percent, according to the American Management Association surveylack policies specifically designed to deal with actual or potential violence originating within or outside of the workplace.²⁵ They rely mainly on conventional disciplinary procedures. As demonstrated by the Royal Oak episode and countless others, conventional, unilateral approaches do not effectively prevent crises and, in some cases, make matters worse. A collaborative problem-solving approach is more likely to succeed.²⁶

The absence of a clearly enunciated violence-prevention policy, accompanied by a collaborative problem-solving mechanism, also increases risk by depriving employees of a recognized non-disciplinary channel for reporting incipient crises. Supervisors, fellow employees and union representatives do not reliably report warning signs, allowing volatile situations to persist and precluding early intervention.

Planning for Violence Prevention

Each workplace should have a violence prevention plan that articulates the rules against harassment, threats of violence, intimidation and violent or disruptive behavior. The rules must be applied fairly. Employers should not act precipitately, without addressing the cause of hostile or unsettling behavior. Nor should they a void action for fear of pushing possibly unstable employees "over the edge." Ignoring threats reinforces the objectionable behavior and increases the risk that the threats will be carried out.

A system for early identification of potentially dangerous situations or behavior can be based on criteria developed by means of an organizational audit. All stakeholders have an interest in cooperating in the development of violence-prevention programs.²⁷ A standing labor-management committee on health and safety issues could serve as a locus of program development and effectiveness monitoring. In place should be a crisis response team that includes representatives of the stakeholders and facilitates non-punitive (e.g., not linked to discipline) access to medical and mental health resources. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has adopted a violence-prevention policy for its own staff, calling for supervisors to become "sensitive to stress generated by the workplace, and consider changes that could alleviate work-related stress." Employees are also encouraged to report signs of stress in their supervisors to the Employee Assistance Program.²⁸ Occasions on which signs of stress might be expected are downsizing, layoffs, and terminations. Care must be taken, of course, to respect whatever rights, such as privacy and freedom of speech, that the employee legally enjoys in the workplace; violence prevention must not become an excuse for witch-hunting. In addition, provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act may be implicated.²⁹

The survey of union officers in the South found that "where union leaders feared that workers could seriously harm him/herself and others, they were caught in a terrible quandary: should theyin violation of deeply held beliefs and, perhaps, their duty of fair representationtake their concern to management?"³⁰ A system of early, non-disciplinary intervention by a multi-faceted team could spare the union such a quandary. Moreover, the ability to call on a crisis response team would help shield the union's members from victimization by non-employees. Unions can ill afford to allow a reflexively adversarial stance to thwart collaborative problem solving, which could be its members' best protection.

Profiling

Whether certain individuals are predisposed to commit violence is a staple of scholarly debate.³¹ Predisposition is an attractive concept; it implies that violence can be predicted and satisfies the current enthusiasm for screening. But the possibility of predicting which individuals will commit violence has never been scientifically proven.

Nevertheless, the notion that violent individuals exhibit a common personality "profile" has entrenched itself in popular mythology. The best known profilethe white male loner who is a war veteran and gun enthusiastis based on retrospective analysis and is too broad to have predictive value. McIlvane would have fit the profile, but so would millions of workers who are entirely peaceable. A profile is no panacea. Indeed, it would be of scant benefit where the threat is from non-employees, such as customers, whose access to the workplace cannot be controlled through psychological screening.

Even if they were effective in predicting or preventing violence, policies based on profiles raise serious ethical concerns. There could be an effort to weed out likely union supporters or identify potential whistleblowers. (In some versions of the profile, a personal history of labor-management disputes is counted as a risk factor.) Training supervisors to recognize profiles is futile, whereas training them to recognize signs of dangerous stress in workers and customers holds genuine promise. Defusing tension is a critical aspect of management.

Dispute Resolution as Violence Prevention

Since conflict among employees or between employees and non-employees may erupt in violence, a prevention plan should include an effective dispute resolution component. Although grievance mechanisms are common, many function poorly. Rather than resolving disputes at an early stage and in an informal manner, the grievance procedure often becomes mired in confrontation and fails to identify the sources or risks of hostile behavior. Indeed, it may exacerbate the dangers by inhibiting early recognition and timely, appropriate responses.

Originally an informal, practical, hands-on mode of problem solving in the workplace, arbitration, the capstone of the grievance process, has become increasingly remote, formalized and given over to lawyerly argument. The norms of litigation replaced those of collaboration, as a problem-solving ethos gave way to an adjudicatory spirit. As in a judicial forum, the parties strive to win at all costs; it is a zero-sum game. Immersed in a stridently adversarial culture, the parties are encouraged to exaggerate their differences rather than search for common ground.

Adopting a scorched-earth mentality in their dealings with one another, the parties often leave the hearing room more hostile than when they entered. The process has been compared to warfare by a veteran participant:

The war has sapped our productivity, diverted legal talent to minuscule disputes, generated divisiveness and suspicion, created and fostered lack of mutual respect and loss of pride in work . . . . [A]rbitration continues to take us down a road of acrimonious debilitating disputes; whereas other forms of ADR are far better designed to bring an end to the warfare In the workplace . . . . [Employers] should be building real, not illusory, internal dispute resolution systems³².

As in litigation, anointing one party the winner or formally assigning blame rarely resolves the underlying conflict, which continues to fester. Although arbitration may dispose of the surface issues, the underlying causes of an outburst or act of insubordination typically are not addressed. Grievants may have little sense of "validation," the feeling that their complaints have been taken seriously. That could have serious implications because the absence of effective channels for expressing anger or distress is a hallmark of the crisis-prone organization.

A Healing, Not a Hearing

The standard union-versus-management configuration, coupled with an adversarial approach, often fails to adequately address the dynamics of inter-employee disputes, which are likely to become more prevalent in the future.³³ A true resolution may require a healing rather than a hearing.³⁴ To achieve lasting results, it is important to allow "the emotions which underlie the dispute to be expressed, understood and validated in a neutral, professional, safe and supportive environment."³⁵ A sincere apology might be more important than a judgment or assignment of blame.

For those conflicts, fortunately, there is a model ready at hand. Disputes that involve individual employees in conflict with each other or with non-employees closely resemble those that traditionally have been labelled "nonlabor" or "community" disputes. Mediation programs outside the labor field are repositories of relevant problem-solving experience and skills, and they could be a key resource for the workplace. That brand of mediation displays characteristics which are well suited to workplace disputes involving interpersonal and intergroup tension:

• The disputants are typically not organized parties, and the dispute often lacks a neat bilateral configuration.
• The disputants interact face to face, rather than through representatives.
• There is an effort at finding new information, achieving better mutual understanding, and eliciting beneficial emotional expression and engagement.
• The disputants come from diverse backgrounds; mediators are accustomed to people of all ages, ethnicities, lifestyles and idiosyncrasies.
• Each disputant tells his story in his own way and in his own words, rather than being subjected to an artificial, question-and-answer style examination.
• The issues range over a broad spectrum and include such highly charged matters as racism, sexism and homophobia.
• The process seeks to restore the harmony of a relationshipsuch as sharing a workbench that must continue after the dispute.

The ability to recognize and resolve disputes at work ought to be considered a valuable job skill. Mediation capabilities should be dispersed throughout an organization to maximize the possibility of an early response to incipient crisis. The CDC, for example, encourages its staff to take courses in dispute resolution, and the Polaroid Corporation's Grievance Assistance Office has trained dozens of employees to serve as in-house mediators of a wide range of disputes. Since the early 1990's, many Postal Service districts have sponsored mediation training for their supervisors and union stewards. Much like firefighters and emergency medical technicians, crisis response teams and in-house mediators need to keep their skills updated through recurrent training. Yet the American Management Association survey suggests that more than two-thirds of employers provide no training related to violence prevention.³⁶

The goal must be to promote safer, healthier and more productive workplaces by reducing hostility violence, harassment and threatening behavior. The goal will not be achieved easily, because violence is deeply embedded in American culture. We are, as a scholar has written, a "gunfighter nation."³⁷ Nevertheless, it should be possible to prevent potentially dysfunctional persons from exploiting disharmony between management and union. Only by collaborative and creative effort will it be possible to marshall the resources of the workplace to ensure its own safety.

The Authors

Tia Schneider Denenberg is an arbitrator and mediator, and the 1992 recipient of the AAA's Distinguished Service Award.

Richard V. Denenberg is a writer and editor specializing in dispute resolution and related public policy issues.

Mark Braverman, Ph.D., is a consulting psychologist who has advised the U.S. Postal Service on violence prevention.

Susan Braverman, M.S.W., is an occupational mental health specialist and designer of crisis intervention programs for major employers.

The authors are principals in Workplace Solutions, a non-profit consortium of professionals in conflict resolution and crisis management. It is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. This article is adapted from a forthcoming book, Fear and Loathing on the Job: Coping with Workplace Violence and Hostility (Cornell University Press).

For further information, contact:

Richard V. Denenberg, Director
Workplace Solutions
82 Church Road
Red Hook, NY 12571-9132
Tel 518-398-5111
Fax 518-398-5193
info@wps.org

Sidebar

Occupational Hazard

Arbitrators often become involved in disputes about violence in the workplace, but sometimes violence erupts in their own workplace: the hearing room. A dramatic instance occurred in the offices of a New Jersey State Board of Mediation on June 6, 1983, while Arbitrator Ernest E. Weiss was taking testimony in a discharge case.

The grievant, a clothing presser in a family-owned department store in West New York, New Jersey, had been terminated on charge of petty theft. The general manager of the store had just finished testifying for the employer. As the participants were filing out of the room for a break, one of the other witnesses, a union shop steward, stepped in front of the general manager and emptied a handgun into him.

"I thought the ceiling was caving in," recalls Arbitrator Weiss. "It sounded like tin falling." The terrified office staff dropped under their desks.

The victim staggered back into the hearing and collapsed, mortally wounded. The shop steward, it turned out, had also been discharged by the employer, a few days earlier. "He was fired on a Monday, bought a gun on Tuesday and used it on Wednesday," according to the arbitrator. The shop steward surrendered to police and later served a prison sentence. As for the grievant, he was reinstated with full back pay.

Since that day, says Weiss, "if I have a major confrontation at the hearing that could turn ugly, I am anxious to mediate the thing." Also, he never sits with his back to the door.

¹ U.S. Postal Service v. National Association of Letter Carriers [C7N-4B-D 29760].

² "Violence in the Workplace Survey Results," Society for Human Resource Management, December, 1993. "Survivors of murdered employees have won sizable sums in civil suits against employers or others with [security] responsibilities in workplaces," according to M. Purdy, "Workplace Murders Provoke Lawsuits and Better Security," New York Times, February 14, 1994, p. 1, col. 4.

³ Fear and Violence in the Workplace: A Survey Documenting the Experiences of American Workers, Northwestern National Life Insurance Company, Minneapolis, MN, 1993.

⁴ American Management Association, 65th Annual Human Resources Conference & Exposition Onsite Survey, "Workplace Violence: Policies, Procedures & Incidents," April 9-13, 1994.

⁵ S.L. Smith, "Violence in the Workplace: A Cry for Help," Occupational Hazards (October 1993) p. 29.

⁶ "9 Fatally Shot in California in 2 Incidents in 2 Days," New York Times, July 20, 1995.

⁷ O.M. Kurland, "Workplace Violence," Risk Management (June, 1993) p. 76.

⁸ "Sources of Information on the Incidence of Domestic Violence at Work and Its Effects," Briefing Memo, Womens' Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, 1994.

⁹ "Cal/OSHA Guidelines for Workplace Security," Division of Occupational Safety and Health, California, Department of Industrial Relations, August 15, 1994.

¹⁰ See, J.A. Klein, "The Human Costs of Manufacturing Reform," Harvard Business Review, March-April, 1989.

¹¹ Edward N. Luttwak, "America's Insecurity Blanket," Washington Post (Weekly Edition), December 5-11, 1994.

¹² Karasek, R, Theorell, T, Healthy Work: Stress, Productivity, and the Reconstruction of Working Life. Basic Books, 1990.

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ P. L. Schnall, et al., "Relation Between Job Strain, Alcohol and Ambulatory Blood Press," Hypertension, May, 1992, 488-94.

¹⁵ Taking America's Pulse: The National Conference Survey On Intergroup Relations, National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1994. See also "Survey Finds Minorities Resent One Another Almost as Much as They Do Whites," New York Times, March 3, 1994, p. B8, col. 1, and L.E. Stallworth and M.H. Malin, "Conflict Arising out of Workforce Diversity," Proceedings of the' Forty-Sixth Annual Meeting, National Academy of Arbitrators, 1993, p. 104.

¹⁶ The U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling upholding the employer, despite claims that it was interfering with the language rights of some employees. Daily Labor Report (BNA), June 21, 1994.

¹⁷ Sources of Information on the Incidence of Domestic Violence at Work and Its Effects," Briefing Paper, Women's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, 1994.

¹⁸ "Domestic Violence Against Women," Resolution No. 135, AFL-CIO Convention 1995, Committee Reports on Resolutions, p. 42,

¹⁹ Judith L. Catlett and David G. Alexander, "Violence in the Workplace: The Union Perspective," Center for Labor Education and Research, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1995.

²⁰ Jordan Barab, "Workplace Violence: How Labor Sees It," New Solutions (AFSCME), Spring, 1995.

²¹ A Matter of Life and Death: Worksite Security and Reducing Risks in the Danger Zone, Civil Service Employees Association, October, 1993.

²² U.S. Postal Service v. National Association of Letter Carriers,` see Note 1, supra.

²³ Mark Braverman, Ph.D., Testimony Before Subcommittee on Postal Personnel and Modernization and Subcommittee on Postal Operations and Services, United States House of Representatives, September 15, 1992.

²⁴ T.C. Pauchant and I.I. Mitroff, Transforming the Crisis-Prone Organization, Jossey-Bass, 1993.

²⁵ AMA Onsite Survey, see Note 4 supra.

²⁶ Mark and Susan Braverman, "Seeking Solutions to Violence on the Job," USA Today Magazine, May, 1994.

²⁷ Stakeholders typically include the union and representatives of various employer departments: human resources, the employee assistance program, medical, legal and security.

²⁸ "Preventing Violence and Threatening Behavior in the Federal Workplace," U.S. Centers for Disease Control Policy Guide, August 16, 1994.

²⁹ Craig M. Cornish, "Employer Responses to Employee Violence: Legal Implications," paper presented to 28th Annual Pacific Coast Labor Law Conference, Seattle, June 8-9, 1995. The author is co-chair of the American Bar Association Subcommittee on Workplace Privacy.

³⁰ Catlett and Alexander, op. cit., supra.

³¹ See, for example, John Monahan, The Clinical Prediction of Violent Behavior (1981) and Robert Menzies, et al., "The Dimensions of Dangerousness Revisited: Assessing Forensic Predictions about Violence," 18 Law and Human Behavior 1 (1994)

³² R.V. Fitzpatrick, "The War in the Workplace Must End, But Arbitration is Not the Answer," Society for Human Resource Management, Spring, 1994, p. 5.

³³ Although a well-known substitute for arbitration, grievance mediation has tended to focus on classical union-management disputes rather than inter-personal conflict.

³⁴ Tia Schneider Denenberg and R.V. Denenberg, "The Future of the Workplace Dispute Resolver," Dispute Resolution Journal, June, 1994.

³⁵ J.K. Hoenig, "Mediation in Sexual Harassment: Balancing the Sensitivities," Dispute Resolution Journal (AAA, December 1993) pp. 51-53, at 53. An ADR forum might comfort victims who are loath to engage in confrontation and, at the same time, offer possibilities for educating the harasser. See S. T. Mackenzie, "Resolving Sexual Harassment Claims Through Alternative Dispute Resolution," Proceedings of the New York University 46th Annual National Conference on Labor, 1994, 225-247.

³⁶ AMA Onsite Survey, see Note 4, supra. The Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations has launched a research and training initiative dedicated to building and maintaining the necessary skills. The program, entitled Workplace Solutions, is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Applying successful techniques adapted from community mediation, crisis management and grievance resolution, it facilitates the transition from crisis-prone to crisis-prepared workplace

³⁷ Richard Slotnick, Gunfighter Nation: The Frontier Myth in 20th Century America (Macmillan, 1992).