Workplace Violence Costs Companies Money, Women Their Lives

Workplace violence has been brought up as a result of the death of Yale student Annie Le. Workplace violence logically is when someone is injured or killed by another person at work. Women are more at risk from workplace violence.

Lisa Takeuchi Cullen has written an article on True/Slant titled "Annie Le murder a case of "workplace violence."

Ms. Cullen does an outstanding job defining workplace violence through Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA's) definition.

OSHA says workplace violence is "the threat of violence against workers...can occur at or outside the workplace...can range from threats and abuse to homicide."

Many people think that there really is no danger because a manager will step in and stop a fight or attack but sometimes weapons are used.

If we analyze Annie Le's death purportedly by a lab tech named Ray Clark we can consider that she outranked him and theoretically he should do what she said. However we do know he called her down about the care of mice although somehow I don't think that is all there is to it.

When she was in the lab alone with Clark the game changes and the formal "rank" no longer matters. If someone is a nut case and they decide to murder you and they are stronger then that is the new "ranking."

The shocking statistics regarding workplace violence are that of 5,702 work-related deaths in 2005, 564 were workplace homicides. That is a whopping 10 percent. Further workplace violence is the second leading cause of workplace deaths of women.

Most of my life I was in management and upper management and I saw the makings of workplace violence and it often involved women and romance.

I employed a husband and a wife at the same location. One day he teed off on her and another man because he thought they were flirting.

I had a clerk come to work with a black eye and keep looking at the front door of the office nervously.

We had a "Secretary's Day" where the secretaries were escorted to a nice lunch by a female vice-president. However that did not stop a paranoid husband from stalking the group.

Finally we were forced to use a "card-swipe" system the same as Annie Le had.

The difference was there were very few people allowed to come in when the office was formally closed.

Women at work who were friendly to everyone would not say a word to anyone when they were picked up by their husbands. They were afraid that they would be accused and assaulted for flirting.

What some people do not understand when talking about equality in the workplace is that you must be very careful how you structure it as to how it looks outside.

I've seen firsthand how dangerous workplace violence is.

References:

http://trueslant.com/lisacullen/2009/09/17/annie-le-murder-a-case-of-workplace-violence/

Personal Experience