The basic relationship between workers and bosses is one in which the former (us) is exploited by the latter (them). That relationship is fundamentally unjust, even when the day-to-day interactions between workers and bosses are conducted on pleasant or friendly terms. Campaigning against bullying does not mean justifying that basic relationship, but when the administering of that relationship by managers takes on a particularly harsh, authoritarian and disciplinarian form it is worth resisting; in order, as much as anything else, to expose the basic inequality at the heart of all boss-worker relationship, whether they involve “bullying” or not.
Precisely because of the inherently exploitative nature of the boss-worker relationship, part of the problem with resisting workplace bullying is the difficulty in defining what constitutes “bullying” and what are merely ordinary symptoms of the basic relationship. We offer here a selection of resources which attempt to define what workplace bullying is.
