Personal Injury Law

Iowa Work. Comp. - Ganging up on an injured worker is a safety issue for management.

By Steve Lombardi

In a post today out of Chicago, Nick Avgerinos discusses worker safety incentive programs and how they can clash, by pitting worker vs. co-worker.

I've seen this first hand in a workers' compensation case in Iowa. The employer had a profit sharing plan in the Ottumwa Plant. When a worker was seriously injured requiring spine surgery he was not only discouraged from reporting the injury but ostracized after he reported it and sought necessary medical care. Management held a special meeting where the workers were informed that this worker's medical care costs would lower the plant's profits thereby reducing the annual contribution to each workers profit sharing plan. The book, Mobbing - Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace, Davenport is an interesting read on this very subject.

"The book "MOBBING: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace" by Noa Zanolli Davenport Ph.D., Ruth Distler Schwartz, and Gail Pursell Elliott is partially based on Dr. Leymann's work. The book and this site are primarily intended as a self-help tool and a resource for targets of workplace mobbing. We also address responsible management and human resources personnel, unions, health care providers, insurance agencies, and lawyers as well as families and friends of targets of mobbing. Above all, we encourage preventive, timely and appropriate action."

One of the authors, Noa Davenport sat for an interview where she defines mobbing and discusses the different aspects.

"Can you explain how mobbing came to be identified historically?
Dr. Heinz Leymann, a psychologist and medical scientist, pioneered the research about this workplace issue in Sweden in the early 80s. He identified the behavior as mobbing and described it as "psychological terror" involving "hostile and unethical communication directed in a systematic way by one or a few individuals mainly towards one individual."

Leymann identified some 45 typical mobbing behaviors such as withholding information, isolation, badmouthing, constant criticism, circulation of unfounded rumors, ridicule, yelling, etc. The affected person is in physical or mental distress, has developed an illness, and experiences social misery."

From all stories about work place safety there is one common thread: Injured workers must protect themselves by knowing their rights and finding a good lawyer to assist them in protecting their jobs and income. For many reasons workers may deny the existence of worker safety lapses until it is their problem. We are all just one accident away from falling through the safety net we all appreciate in the workers' compensation system. Workers need to recognize the benefits of workers' compensation in their states and take control of it so that employers don't wreck it. It's that simple.

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on May 09, 2008 (boomark / email).