Workplace Bullying, Disability and Chronic Ill Health

Abstract

This chapter considers how and why people with disabilities, impairments and chronic ill health report being subjected to bullying at work. Against a global environment that is reporting increases in working age, elongated access to workplace pensions as well as a growth in insecure work, workplaces of the future are increasingly likely to encompass increasing numbers of workers who are more likely to have some form of impairment or chronic ill health. Aside from gender and race, workplace bullying researchers have generally been slow to embrace diverse workplace populations with very little data on the experiences of people classified as holding impairments or chronic ill health. These populaces require careful research designs sensitive to their situations and mindful of how bullying at work can manifest in their lives. This chapter sets out some of the challenges facing researchers operating in a political–social landscape that currently locates the disabled and chronically sick as a cost to be managed. In maintaining the tradition of trying to make workplaces fairer and more dignified in their treatment of workers, the chapter sets out some of the challenges of seeing disabled people as ordinary human diversities rather than pathologies.