Bullying at Work in Fair Work Act
Introduction

According to a research, the rate of bullying at work has been growing. Bullying behaviour is usually troublesome and annoying, which disturbs the normal work situation of the workers. Bullying happens when an employee is forced to work unreasonably. It will lead diseases and danger to the employee (McCrystal, 2010). Behaviours such as unreasonable management, looking down upon others with shameful words, spreading goosips and scandals purposely, too much jobs and too many working hours can be considered as a kind of bullying behaviours at work (Australia, 2010). In order to prevent bullying behaviours and protecht the rights of the employess, Fair Work Act is made to guarantee the rights of them (Australia, 2010). As bullying at work varies from different workplaces with different development and management, some terms of Fair Work Act has to be updated as the time goes by. The updated Fair Work Act will come into effect on January 1 of 2014. This essay is going to talk about the terms in Fair Work Act and how it influence and protect the rights of employees (McCrystal, 2010).

Anti-bullying Orders

Anti-bullying orders were first implemented in 1994. Bullying at work was defined by the Ordinance of the Swedish National Board of Occupational Safety and Health as recurring, obvious, unreasonable behaviours that violate the rights of employees (The Swedish National Board of Occupational Health and Safety, 1994). The behaviour bullying at work sometimes is similar to the behaviour bullying at school. The organizational atmosphere and the working environment sometimes are the main reasons to cause bullying behaviour. Though, bullying behaviours sometimes will also be caused by individual reasons (Monks & Smith, 2000). For example, the personalities or characters of an individual such as arrogance, disability, recreance, pudency, loneliness and social rejection will cause bullying behaviours no matter at work or at school (Coyne, 1999). It is debated that employers and managers will possibly not fully agree with anti-bullying orders which will have an influence on the power and the current situation at work (Beale & Hoel, 2011). Moreover, it is interesting that the objectives of bullying should inform their direct superious instead of Human Resources Department (Salin, 2008).

Nowadays, according to the new anti-bullying orders, the employees can apply to the Commission in order to stop the bullying behaviours. The Commission is required to deal with the cases within 14 days and give a conclusion. From the view of the updated terms in Fair Work Act, bullying still happens when the individual is forced unreasonably to work over and over and even work exceeds the range of their responsibility (Australia, 2010). The bullying behaviours can cause diseases and danger to the individual. However, if an individual is careless at work or rude, or he is just taking his responsibility of work under reasonable conduct, it will not cause bullying behaviour. Only the employee is working under unreasonable management, he can apply to the Commission.

Amendment in Fair Work Act
Bullying at work now is becoming more and more serious in modern society. However, it is really difficult to give an accurate definition to it (Beale & Hoel, 2011). There is no appropriate measurement to define it. The definition of bullying at work can be made through the careful researches by the social scientists (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf & Cooper, 2003). The type and frequency of the behaviours can be the factors to give a definition. Various measurements can help the researchers and practitioners distinguish bullying behaviours effectively (Salin, 2011). Most of researchers and practitioners have been trying to define the bullying behaviour at work. As a result, there are many different meanings of bullying at work all over the world. That is to say that bullying at work is being investigated in most parts of the world (Coyne, Seigne & Randall, 1999). The mobbing bullying behaviours are considered to be a serious problem in the world (Leymann, 1996). However, most of the employees are not clear about what is bullying behaviours at work. They do not know if the behaviour is legal or not and if they can use any law to protect themselves.
With the efforts of researchers and practitioners, it is now clear that the conponents of the definition of bullying is consist of adults who have different backgournds (Salin, 2011). They considered that bullying bahaviours are harmful and negative, which will have bad influence on the health and safety of the employees (Baron & Neuman, 1998). The definition should be fair and respectful. In order to prevent bullying from happening at work, some local laws such as Fair Work Act are made to protect the rights, safety and health of the employees at their workplaces (Leymann, 1996). With the progress and development of the society, many new types of bullying behaviours happen. In order to protecht the rights of the employees, some terms in the Fair Work Act are changed and adjusted to meet the new needs of them (Australia, 2010). It becomes neccessary to amend the Fair Work Act (Australia, 2010). In 2012 and 2013, the admendment laws were passed. New changes are adopted according to the law, such as new measures to resist bullying behaviours, changes to right of entry, new reference to change regular rosters and working time, effective intercession for layoff debates at the Fair Work Commission, new due time to stop illegal end the labour contracts and updated terms for retirement pay (McCrystal, 2010).
Bullying Behaviours at Work
The behaviour must recur frequently and be suffered for a long time that it can be considered to be bullying at work (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf & Cooper, 2003). Its persistency is an important point to clarify a bullying behaviour because it has serious and negative influence on the bullied one (Leymann, 1996).  A distinct feature of bullying at work is that the behaviour is negative verbal or non-verbal. When the employees are asked what they have suffered from work, they usually can not tell the obvious features of the behaviours they experienced (Baron & Neuman, 1998). For instance, there is an analysis about the targets who experienced verbal aggressive and gossips, most of which happened in an individual or public company (Baron & Neuman, 1998). However, it has been arguing that how long the time and frequency should be so that the behaviour can be seen as bullying. It is difficult to distinguish bullying behaviour from other rude behaviours at work. “Repeated negative acts” mostly can define the characters of bullying behaviours (Olweus, 1991). At first, it was defined as 5 types of bullying behaviours such as harassment, namely scapegoating, name calling, physical abuse, work pressure and sexual harassment (Brodsky, 1976). Later, it was considered that bullying behaviours included violation of reputation, working abilities, communication abilities and social abilities (Leymann, 1990). Some physical pressure or threats can be also considered to be bullying behaviours. In 1994, there was a research about bad leadership (Ashforth, 1994). It pointed out that there were six types of behaviours in leaders and managers such as verbearing and arrogant, looking down on others, little considerate, rudely conflict resolving, gossips and unreasonable penalty (Ashforth, 1994).
Andrea Adams, who is an English author, considered that bullying was a continuous aggression to an individual (Beale & Hoel, 2011). Perhaps the identification to some behaviour of a victim more relies on the who makes the behaviour than what actually the behaviour is. Hence it is more difficult to judge the behaviour if it is really negative or not. All in all, when a baviour is forced to happen repeatedly in a long period which also has negative effects, it can be consideres as a bullying behaviour (Salin, 2011). Furthermore, the power of the leaders and managers must be some imbalanced. Therefore, there will be some difficulties for the person to defend himself/herself in such a situation (Coyne, Seigne & Randall, 1999). If the two parts have the same power and they are in conflict, it is not bullying behaviour, but another kind of office conflict.

Conclusion

Bullying at work can cause some serious results for the employees in the company. Therefore, the company should take some measure to protect their employees and help them defend themselves when they are bullied during work. It can be concluded from the above that bullying at work can include different features (Beale & Hoel, 2011). Professionaly, most employees consider it important  that a workplace should have no aggressive behaviour. Currently there is still no a standard to judge bullying behaviour at work. Due to this situation, it is better for the employers to be considerate for their employees and how to deal with bullying (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf & Cooper, 2003). In the view of the amended Fair Work Act, if some one want to be a member of the Commission, he/she must be working in a governmental business, such as the government department and some incorporated business. If not, when an individual experience bullying behaviour, he can ask for help from local occupational health and safety body. Moreover, if the individual is no longer working at the company, he can not apply to the the Commission for defending. Of course, if he is dismissed without any reason, he can still appeal for the unfair behaviour (McCrystal, 2010).

 

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