Some points of view on violence in workplaces, here and in the US.
Don Walker, President of Pinkerton, the US-based security firm, has been a speaker at conferences on workplace violence in the US. He says: ?From verbal abuse and harassment to multiple homicides, corporate America is under attack. Violence and threats of violence are changing how corporations interact with both their employees and their customers. Because acts of violence can devastate not only the lives of the individuals involved, but also the image and finances of the corporation, business ethics and fiscal responsibility dictate that corporations today must put in place strong measures to protect their company’s assets…especially that most important asset, people.? For details see the MIS Training Institute website, www.misti.com.
The California Legislature in 1994 enacted a law allowing employers to obtain temporary restraining orders and injunctions against individuals who make credible threats of violence against employees. The legislation was crafted in response to several high-profile incidents in which domestic disputes spilled over to the workplace with deadly results. One of those involved a love-crazed mail carrier who followed a female co-worker to her office and opened fire with a handgun, killing one employee and wounding another. The law was seldom applied at first, but use is rising. Injunctions are to protect staff from threat-makers coming within a set distance of a workplace, or making harassing phone calls. The unanswerable question is whether such recourse to the law will defuse a situation or inflame it. As one lawyer put it in the Los Angeles Times: ?If you’ve got someone who is a wacko, they’re not going to care if there is an injunction or not.?
Teachers in England and Wales have to follow Section 550A of the 1996 Education Act, which is intended to clarify what physical force they can use. In 1998 all schools were sent guidance on that section by the Department for Education and Employment. It says schools must have a policy on using force and a copy should be sent to parents with information about discipline and the standards of behaviour expected from pupils. The guidance says teachers can ?use reasonable force to control or restrain pupils? but it makes clear there is no legal definition of reasonable force. It goes on to say there are a ?wide variety of situations in which reasonable force might be appropriate?. They fall into three categories – self-defence, averting injury or significant damage to property and dealing with a pupil who is ?behaving in a way that is compromising good order and discipline?.
