Bully Clueless for 10 Years

April 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Update: Judge Fuller declared on June 20, 2011 that he will  retire from the bench, rather than continue working under strict supervision until the mandatory retirement age of 70.  The state Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Judge Fuller had to retire unless he agreed to undergo a six-month suspension followed by strict probation for misconduct that included mistreating lawyers, court personnel and others. Fuller claimed he could not afford the cost of the suspension and probation, which he estimated to be $174,000. He says he will start working as an attorney in July. PGB

ALLEGED BULLY CLUELESS FOR TEN YEARS

April 28, 2011 – The South Dakota Supreme Court is considering whether to return suspended 7th Circuit Judge A.P. “Pete” Fuller to the bench after complaints that amount to bullying.

In a plea to keep his job, Fuller, 68, said “I am ashamed … My conduct and actions have affected people I love and respect.”

According to the Rapid City Journal, Fuller’s tearful demeanor was a sharp contrast to the irreverent, caustic description painted by the findings of Judicial Qualifications Commission that has asked the state’s top court to remove or retire an elected judge for the first time in its 121-year history.

The Journal says that an investigation and transcripts of two closed-door hearings of the commission record the testimony of several people who described Fuller’s behavior as verbally abusive, sometimes profane and often biased, both in formal court setting and at other times.

Court documents state Fuller gave one attorney the ” bird” and publicly referred to juvenile court as “little prick day.”

During the hearings, Fuller acknowledged that some of his conduct was inappropriate but denied other allegations, including his alleged use of profanity in front of clerks of court.

Fuller said he had enrolled in anger-management classes and now understood that others perceived his irritation and annoyance with situations as “anger and rudeness and abrasiveness, and I believe somebody even said bullying.”

“It never dawned on him that he was mistreating people,” said one of two lawyers representing Fuller.

Much of the inappropriate conduct that Fuller is accused of was never dealt with during his 10 years on the bench, and he received no feedback suggesting that his conduct was inappropriate, Fuller’s other lawyer said.

In response, Attorney Michael Schaffer, who represented the commission said:

“He got feedback when deputy clerks ran out of the courtroom in tears.”

“This inquiry … comes down to Judge Fuller’s conduct. The conduct of Judge Fuller basically concerns his treatment of people in his court and his treatment of people as a judge,” Schaffer said.

Fuller’s lawyers are attempting to portray the matter as having political undertones, while stressing the importance of an independent judiciary.  Fuller allegedly referred to law enforcement officers as a “bunch of racists” during a juvenile hearing, prompting complaints from law enforcement and prosecutors.

- PGB ([email protected])

See The Rapid City Journal story: http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/article_d6f3ac0e-71c7-11e0-883c-001cc4c002e0.html.

Filed Under: DISPATCHES Tagged With: , , , Court, , Judicial demeanor, Judiciary,

CareerBuilder:1 IN 4 Workers Bullied

April 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment

This is one of the largest surveys to date and it provides still more evidence of the pervasiveness of unaddressed bullying in the workplace and the devastating impact that it can have upon the target and the employer. Other surveys have found a higher percentage, including the 2010 Z0gby International Survey, in which 35% of workers said they  eexperienced bullying firsthand .- PGB

Twenty-Seven Percent of Workers Have Felt Bullied 

CB_WebLogo_150x33

April 20, 2011 – A  CareerBuilder survey   of 5,671 U.S. workers reveals that more than one in four (27 percent) workers have felt bullied in the workplace, with the majority neither confronting nor reporting the bully.

The most common bully? The boss.

According to survey results, 14 percent of workers felt bullied by their immediate supervisor, while 11 percent felt bullied by a co-worker.  Seven percent said the bully was not their boss but someone else higher up in the organization, while another 7 percent said the bully was their customer.

 Bullying reports by gender and age

  • Comparing genders and age groups, the segments that were more likely than others to report feeling bullied were women, workers ages 55 or older (29 percent), and workers age 24 or younger (29 percent).
  • Women reported a higher incidence of being treated unfairly at the office.  One-third (34 percent) of women said they have felt bullied in the workplace, compared to 22 percent of men. Of course, this doesn’t mean fewer men are bullied, necessarily — just that fewer men report it. And, according to research by organizational behavior and leadership expert Denise Salin, women are more likely than men to self-label as a target of bullying.
  • Workers ages 35 to 44 were the least likely to report feeling bullied, with only one in four doing so … .

When asked to describe how they were bullied, workers pointed to the following examples:

  •      My comments were dismissed or not acknowledged (43 percent).
  •     I was falsely accused of mistakes I didn’t make (40 percent).
  •     I was harshly criticized (38 percent).
  •     I was forced into doing work that really wasn’t my job (38 percent).
  •     Different standards and policies were used for me than other workers (37 percent).
  •     I was given mean looks (31 percent).
  •     Others gossiped about me (27 percent).
  •     My boss yelled at me in front of other co-workers (24 percent).
  •     Belittling comments were made about my work during meetings (23 percent).
  •     Someone else stole credit for my work (21 percent).

 What are companies doing to combat this workplace bullying?

Twenty-eight percent of workers who were bullied brought the situation to a higher authority by reporting the bully to their Human Resources department. While 38 percent of these workers stated that measures were taken to investigate and resolve the situation, the majority of workers (62 percent) said no action was taken.

…. workplace bullying …  seems to be prevalent in organizations that support, accept or allow such behavior, or where employees feel that they can “get away with it” or where it is accepted as part of a “tough” climate.” Even worse, new employees and managers can become socialized into treating bullying as a normal feature of working life.

Filed Under: DISPATCHES Tagged With: , , , Denise Salin, survey on workplace bullying,

QUEEN BEE???

April 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

April 11, 2011

What follows are excerpts from a study by psychologists at the University of Cincinnati concluding that female bosses tend to be “cogs in the machine” to other women in the workplace.According to the researchers, a female boss is more likely to wreck a woman’s promotion prospects in male-dominated environments and men who report to a female manager get much more mentoring and support than their female colleagues.

The researchers say that women who manage to break the glass ceiling may not want competition from other women and/or may want to blend in as much as possible with their male counterparts.

The import of the study, in my opinion, is that the researchers say workplaces are still pervasively male-oriented in their customs, policies, and structures, and that female bosses are no different from male bosses in reacting to organizational preferences to invest in men’s careers more so than women’s.  This is what needs to change.  No boss should be a “cog in the machine.”

To commemorate International Women’s Day, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet,  the head of the new U.N. women’s agency,  recently said there has been “remarkable progress” since International Women’s Day was first celebrated a century ago but that gender equality remains a distant goal because women still suffer widespread discrimination and lack political and economic clout. – PGB

queen beeMEN GET MORE SUPPORT THAN WOMEN

FROM FEMALE BOSSES

Excerpt from:  Maume, David J. ,  Meet the new boss…same as the old boss? Female supervisors and subordinate career prospects,  Social Science Research Volume 40, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 287-298.

… Drawing a 2002 national sample of non-managerial workers, men exceeded women in receiving job-related support from female supervisors and were more optimistic about their promotion chances as a result. Although cross-sectional data precludes drawing firm conclusions regarding processes that occur over-time, the results are consistent with the notion that female managers are cogs in the machine, in that female supervisors have little or no effect on the career prospects of female subordinates, and instead foster men’s career prospects.

… when women attain jobs paying wages similar to men’s, informal workplace dynamics are unleashed that seek to restore men’s more privileged position in the workplace. These processes include isolation and exclusion from informal networks and professional growth opportunities ([Purcell, 2007] and [Reskin et al., 1999]), ratcheting up job demands to determine if women will put work ahead of family life as men do ([Fried, 1998] and [Hochschild, 1997]), and harassment of a general and/or sexual nature ([Acker, 1990] and [Roscigno, 2007]). The cumulative effect of these informal processes is that women’s work effectiveness is compromised, increasing the likelihood that they will either quit their jobs or be fired.

Given gendered informal dynamics that are pervasive in the workplace, some contend that female bosses either lack the power to impede organizational preferences to foster men’s careers, or that female bosses agree with negative stereotypes of female workers ([Cooper, 1997] and [Deaux, 1985]; Wajcman, 1998). And of course, female supervisors may themselves be the victims of informal processes to marginalize them and compromise their effectiveness ([Kanter, 1977] and [Fried, 1998]). In either case, when subordinates report to female supervisors, they may not perceive them to be any different from male bosses who give male subordinates more attention and more chances for promotion as way to advance their own careers. If so, female subordinates will be more likely to quit out of frustration or be fired, even though they may hold jobs paying wages similar to men’s. Jacobs (1989) characterized this process as one of “revolving doors,” in which women enter high-paying male-typed jobs only to exit these jobs later. This dynamic could reconcile the apparent inconsistency between studies reporting an association between more female managers and a lower gender wage gap, and this study’s finding that men’s, but not women’s, career prospects are enhanced when reporting a female superior.

… Despite these caveats, this study is the first representative analysis of how subordinate career prospects are affected by directly reporting to a female supervisor. The results are consistent with much research showing that workplaces are pervasively male-oriented in their customs, policies, and structures, and that female bosses are no different from male bosses in reacting to organizational preferences to invest in men’s careers more so than women’s. Additional research is needed on the organizational mechanisms fostering or impeding women’s ascendance to supervisory positions in order to assess progress toward the goal of affording men and women equal opportunity to exercise managerial authority. Yet, irrespective of what future studies of managerial attainment show, those who expect that female bosses will dramatically change the nature of superior-subordinate relations are likely to be disappointed.

Filed Under: DISPATCHES Tagged With: , , , , cogs in the machine, female bosses, glass ceiling, , University of Cincinnati
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