Kicking ’em when they’re down

Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury back in the glory days of 1937, is reported to have had strange views on bullying. His chaplain told him that Lang’s response to the Abdication made many people feel he had kicked a man when he was down. “But what’s the point of kicking a man,” mused his Grace, “if they’re not down?”

Apparently such attitudes are still alive and kicking in the UK workplace. The Equality and Human Rights Commission reports research that indicates some frankly disgusting home truths. Here is a list of workplace behaviours, reported by people with disabilities/ long term illness, and people without. See if you can make it through, without feeling sick. Proportions with a disability/ long-term illness are given in bold, set against a control group without, in italics. The asterisk indicates statistical significance:

1 - Someone withholding information which affects your performance: 18.9% (15.6%)
2 - Pressure from someone else to do work below your level of competence 19.3%* (13.5%)
3 - Having your opinions and views ignored 36.6%* (29.8%)
4 - Someone continually checking up on you or your work when it is not necessary 25.0%* (19.4%)
5 - Pressure from someone else not to claim something which by right you are entitled to 15.8%* (9.8%)
6 - Being given an unmanageable workload or impossible deadlines 41.1%* (31.1%)
7 - Your employer not following proper procedures 35.2%* (22.4%)
8 - Being treated unfairly compared to others in your workplace 21.5%* (16.7%)
9 - Being humiliated or ridiculed in connection with your work 13.4%* (8.7%)
10 - Gossip and rumours being spread about you or having allegations made against you 21.8%* (12.1%)
11 - Being insulted or having offensive remarks made about you 27.4%* (16.2%)
12 - Being treated in a disrespectful or rude way 34.7%* (24.8%)
13 - People excluding you from their group 14.1%* (8.7%)
14 - Hints or signals from others that you should quit your job 14.4%* (8.1%)
15 - Persistent criticism of your work or performance which is unfair 22.5%* (13.4%)
16 - Teasing, mocking, sarcasm or jokes which go too far 18.7%* (13.2%)
17 - Being shouted at or someone losing their temper with you 37.3%* (25.9%)
18 - Intimidating behaviour from people at work 25.4%* (15.2%)
19 - Feeling threatened in any way while at work 19.4%* (12.3%)
20 - Actual physical violence at work 11.6%* (5.5%)
21 - Injury in some way as a result of violence or aggression at work 8.8%* (4.7%)

So your chances of being beaten up are actually 3% higher if you are in a wheelchair. What??! And if you aren’t in a chair, but suffer from a learning difficulty, psychological or emotional condition, the likelihood of these negative experiences at work increases by a sickening 167 %. What, indeed??!

Additional factors that raise the chances of experiencing such behaviour include:

• Sexual orientation - being gay increased negative behaviour by 55 per cent
• Public sector - working in the public sector increased negative behaviour by 57 per cent

I cannot begin to account for these shameful figures, which strike me as way out of kilter with the kind of people we would all, surely, want to believe ourselves to be. One thing is obvious, however. This is a problem for all of us, even though the objects of bullying are picked off one by one on any given occasion. Formal workplace procedures need to be backed by positive understanding and partnership. The Churches should be in the lead, but, sadly, whatever we profess, third sector workers raise their chances of being bullied by 118%.

When and how do we think things are going to change, and how proactive are we willing to be to change them?

h/t Ann Memmott — thanks for drawing this report to my attention

Human Rights begin with us

Everybody should respect human rights... that often means Everybody else. How about us? How aligned are our values with the ways we treat our own people? It’s sometimes suggested Bishops are guardians of orthodoxy, to enforce conformity of doctrine. Actually, in the Acts of the Apostles there’s almost none of that. Right being aligns with right doing, the weeding out of hypocrisy, the discernment of strategic direction, not behaving like the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition, least of all about ideology.

So how do we respect human beings habitually in this diocese? On the Day of Pentecost, God could have put the clock back to the Tower of Babel — one language, one simple identity, and lots of neat little bricks all in a row until we reach heaven. But God didn’t do that. In an essentially chaotic act he affirmed the value and identity of every language and culture under heaven. God passionately affirms human diversity — do we?

Martin Luther King said “Peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of justice.” Christians talk a lot about love, and the first claim of love is justice. To lie low playing “Colour blind”, bracketing racial justice along with motherhood and apple pie, is just not enough. We need to get real about this. We need to take positive action. It involves holding ourselves accountable for cherishing the diversity to which God calls us, with as much determination as we pay our bills and taxes.

I've been doing some serious work with our diocesan Committee for Racial Justice, which I chair. We’ve been working hard to develop what we call a Rigorous Diversity agenda, and it begins with us, not “them”. We’re studying the Wood-Shepherd principles, and working out how and when to apply them to our diocese. And I believe finding a way to do that will help with various other objectives. Rigorous, open diversity practice founded on respect and fully accountable will help grow a kingdom culture.

Auditing and enforcing a rigorous diversity agenda will help create a fairer, safer working environment — one in the eye for the bullies. It will give a truer perspective in which to have discussions about authority (male and female), and, perhaps, even help us to discern sexual orientation issues more honestly and truthfully. I can quite understand why intelligent people out there cannot hear the gospel in us, and even hold us in contempt, for as long as our HR practice is less fair and accountable than that of Woolworth’s.

Get our act together on this and who knows, people on the outside may begin to realise that, OK we are a bunch of hypocrites, but a bunch of hypocrites who are being healed... Let’s put some serious work into respect for the human beings closest to us, in basic accountable ways. Then see what kind of love begins to grow among us, and where that enables the wind of the Spirit to take us. It’s a major undertaking, but I believe it’s been neglected, and it’s worth serious effort.