I support the Healthy Workplace Bill in Connecticut

Support the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill, which creates a legal claim for targets of workplace bullying, mobbing, or other abusive conduct at work who can establish that they were subjected to malicious, health-harming behavior. It also provides defenses for employers who act preventatively and responsively with regard to bullying and includes provisions to discourage frivolous claims.

Existing laws require harassment to be discriminatory. Either race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, marital status, sex, age, or sexual orientation is required to be illegal. Approximately two-thirds of all harassment is 'status-blind' and legal. In 1998, the Washington Post editorialized "what bothers people about abusive workplace conduct, after all, is not the fact that it may be discriminatory but that it is abusive in the first place."

The Healthy Workplace Bill substitutes health-impairment for discrimination, and extends protection to all employees, working for either public or private employers, regardless of protected group status, who seek redress for being subjected to an abusive work environment. It becomes unlawful to be subjected to another employee whose malicious conduct sabotages or undermines the targeted person's work performance. Furthermore, the bill holds the bullying employee directly liable for the unlawful employment practice and punishes retaliation of the complainant.

Individual plaintiffs must rely solely on private attorneys. The State has no enforcement role. No government bureaucracy will be created or funded. Individuals may accept workers' compensation benefits in lieu of bringing action under this bill.

The bill seeks to compel employer prevention through internal policies and enforcement. No new employer regulations are created.