Last Tuesday, Trent Security Officer Brenda Whetung appeared in court after being charged last month with public mischief after issuing a false complaint to the police in September 2003. On September 29, Whetung had called the police on a co-worker who was the target of bullying in the security office, after the fellow-employee filed a complaint with the Trent Human Rights Office. She claimed that her co-worker had “assaulted” her. However, there was a witness present, and the allegation was rejected by the police.

Personal harassment and bullying has been rampant in the Security office for several years, according to a recent ombudsperson’s report joint-commissioned by the university and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) Local 365.

In the wake of this report, the university has “disciplined” Whetung and Security Officer Randy Grimms.

The report was precipitated by a successful grievance filed through OPSEU by the same security office employee who had complained to the Human Rights Advisor. An overview of the confidential report, released by the university and the union in December 2003, stated that “workers encountered unrelenting bullying and personal harassment with the intent to intimidate.”

The overview accused “management” of “insufficient action” and lack of intervention. According to one source, the specific managers who were indicted in the first draft of the overview were Physical Resources Director John Wordley and the Manager of Labour Relations in Trent’s Human Resources department, Stephanie Williams.

When Arthur contacted the grievor, who has since been redeployed to a different position at the university, she reiterated these points. She emphasized that “it was not just me who was being harassed, but numerous people. I was the only one who stood up and told them it was unacceptable.”

The grievor’s work was often tampered with, and she alleges that her computer files were accessed and copied. Human Resources investigated the matter, but did not state who was responsible.

While the grievor says Security Director David MacLauchlan and Assistant Director Daniel Lemon “reiterated [her] concerns...[she] didn’t see anyone intervening from Human Resources.”

While interpersonal problems in the security office had already been documented in two previous reports, the last of which was released in the spring of 2003, Williams explained “I think that you could say that there was insufficient information.”
As the ombudsperson who conducted the report, Beverly Robson, aptly observed, the grievor and Human Resources “still don’t necessarily agree on each other’s positions.”

The Vice President of Human Resources, David Mahy, and Williams, maintain that they had not heard about the details of the personal harassment and bullying until Mahy received a five-page email from the grievor. Before that, they had only been hearing “vague” complaints, beginning in March, from Security office employees. Williams noted that “employees would be vague in what they said. People in the department felt that there was different treatment for some people.”

For Robson, Human Resources’ insistence that they had previously heard nothing about the issue “tells me that they didn’t perhaps know what they were dealing with.”

There is documentation of numerous complaints that the grievor, MacLauchlan and Lemon made to senior management, as far back as October 2002.

The ombudsperson’s report, OPSEU and Human Resources have all emphasized that personal harassment and bullying have only recently begun to gain recognition as serious problems in the workplace. While employees’ rights to a safe workplace are recognized in law, the Ontario Human Rights Code only has provisions to protect people from harassment based on race, gender, sexual orientation and ability. It contains nothing to protect people from workplace bullying, a phenomenon described by the Law Society of Alberta as “the deliberate, repeated and health-endangering mistreatment of one person [the target] by a perpetrator whose destructive actions are fueled by the bully’s need to control the target.” In Quebec, there has been greater progress in addressing the issue; this July, legislation protecting people from “psychological predators” and personal harassment in workplaces will come into effect in the province.

In the overview, which was signed in mid-December, the university and the union agreed that the university would undertake “all necessary steps to ensure the non-occurance” of such events in the future throughout the university, and that the results of this undertaking would “be determined and finalized over the next sixty days and will be communicated to all members of the OPSEU bargaining unit.”

When Arthur asked OPSEU 365 President Rod MacDonald last Thursday whether he knew if Human Resources had taken any steps yet, he noted that “I haven’t heard of anything.” He added that “In my opinion, we’re past the 60 day deadline stated on the overview.”

Human Resources, however, interpreted the deadline differently. According to Mahy, the 60 days should have begun not in December when the overview was signed, but in January, which is when he says the overview was posted. Williams stated that Human Resources was in the preliminary stages of developing training initiatives.

An earlier report that Human Resources commissioned by a consultant with close ties to the department generated far less insight into the Security office problems. The report by Michael Hart relied on interviews with employees in the presence of Wordley. Hart has frequently been hired by the university to conduct reports. Although the university refrained for a time from hiring him in the aftermath of one report he wrote in the late 1990s, which revealed information unpopular with the administration, he has developed better relations in recent years, and will even be filling in for Williams when she goes away on pregnancy leave in May.

Both Human Resources and the union agreed that the success of the ombudsperson in uncovering long-buried problems was partly due to the fact it was conducted by an external, independent party. As Robson herself commented on her role, she provided “first of all, an outside view. In this case, people were much too close to each other.”

Robson notes that her background as a former Ontario Human Rights Officer, and her experience providing training and counseling in human resources offices, has given her experience with issues of harassment. Significantly, she has kept abreast of current thinking on harassment issues, and seems to have a high level of awareness about the issue of workplace bullying.

One might speculate that Mahy’s past employment record may also have given him some experience with personal harassment. Prior to his position at Trent, he was responsible for labour relations at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, an old age home which lost an historic legal challenge launched by a former employee, who had been dismissed by her employers in 1998 in a manner that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said involved acts “so extreme and insensitive that they constituted a reckless and wanton disregard for the health of the plaintiff.”

Iole Prinzo, who had worked as a hairdresser for 17 years in the home, had faced what seems like a classic case of personal harassment in the final months of her position. The judge in the Prinzo versus Baycrest case ruled that the defendant’s employees were fully aware “of the detrimental effect their harassment would have on the plaintiff and yet they persisted [with] such harassment with almost sadistic resolve.”

Mahy himself was implicated in Prinzo’s callous and psychologically harmful dismissal. The judge observed that “During the discussions Mr. Mahy in some way said or inferred that the plaintiff’s conduct was harming the residents. The statement was most hurtful and upsetting to the plaintiff. [She] openly wept in the witness box when recalling this statement which suggested that the plaintiff would harm residents that she had served for more than 17 years.”

Mahy was hired as Trent’s VP Human Resources September 11 2003, five months after the Ontario Superior Court judgement on the Baycrest versus Prinzo case. The Trent Report announced his posting with a paraphrased citation from the former vice president administration, Sally Young: “Mahy brings to the position extensive skills in team building.”

Before the Trent security employee filed her grievance, Williams and Mahy had been communicating with her and union reps about a separate matter related to the grievor’s position. The grievor had been promised a promotion by her supervisor, and was actively working towards this promotion. According to OPSEU, she was advised by Williams not to bother applying for superior positions right away because if she waited until the end of May, she would have the Right of First Refusal, and would be able to advance without facing job competition.

However, at the end of May, Human Resources suddenly announced that her position was to be “restructured,” and that there was no chance that she would be promoted. As Human Resources had not advised her supervisor in the security office in advance of the restructuring, the grievor had no warning. The grievor had meetings with both Williams and Mahy about this issue, and she noted that her relations with Williams were “tainted as a result of all this.”

Although a settlement was reached through the grievance process, MacDonald noted: “If you have to move out of a department, can you really say you’ve won?” The grievor was upset that she was forced to leave the office where she had worked; “everyone should have the right to not be bullied out of their position.”

Mahy however maintains that the grievor’s ‘redeployment’ to another department on January 5, 2004, was “truly not related to the topic [of bullying];” “it’s not something arising out of relationship issues.” He maintains that she left due to “purely employment issues” related to the restructuring of the Physical Resources department.

After receiving the grievor’s letter, Mahy met with the grievor about separate matters relating to her position, and to her future employment, and gave her two options: either return to the position she had begun 14 months earlier in the security office, which was inferior to the work she had already been doing in the immediately preceding months, or take a position elsewhere in the university which was commensurate to the higher calibre work that she had recently engaged in.

For OPSEU, her returning to the office that was the site of bullying and personal harrassment was out of the question. From the union’s perspective, returning the employee to the office in which she was facing harassment would have been wrong, given that the employer has a legal obligation, once an employee has complained that their work environment is unhealthy, to ensure a healthy work environment. The former steward was surprised that Mahy would claim that the grievor’s redeployment had nothing to do with her grievance. She noted that “[OPSEU] would never have agreed to it otherwise.”

Williams and Mahy were quite optimistic about the manner in which the university is handling the newly identified issue of workplace bullying, which they note many institutions have not even begun to address yet. David Mahy stated “the whole thing has come out positive.” He even joked that “we may have to go on a lecture circuit.”

Human Resources training initiatives will include an in-house training program for management and staff. Human Resources has prepared a draft, which they have yet to show the union, and they are in the process of hiring an external human resources consultant. They have also contacted a number of people to assist with training. Training sessions are due to start in May or June, and more details are to be posted on the Human Resources website.

In the meantime, Robson has still not been paid for the labour she put into investigating the issues in the security office and drawing up recommendations. She remarks that “the report was more than they’d anticipated, so payment is still outstanding.” She noted that when she had initially been hired, the problems she was to investigate had been explained as “a relatively simple issue.”
-With files from Mike Johnston