A Commonwealth employee passes away on the job after administrators allegedly refused to accept her doctorā€™s note

My late sister-in-law was a long-term and highly regarded employee of DDS and was ready to retire in a few months. She had some attendance problems due to significant illness and provided her employers with doctor’s notes stating that she was impaired and needed to go on an intermittent Leave of Absence as per her condition. She was a 35+-year employee.
 
She was told that her doctor’s note would not be accepted and that she had to report to work or she would be terminated.
 
Laurie was single and could not afford to lose her job. She reported for duty on third shift and was instructed to work alone, although she felt uncomfortable doing so.
 
She suffered a stroke and died that evening on duty following an argument with her supervisor. 
 
The center fought the family, whose lawyer told them what my lawyer told me: you cannot afford to fight the Commonwealth.
 
Due to my own egregious situation, I had worked with the union and...
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When fear from bullying at work costs lives

We talk about consequences for workplace bullying targets and their organizations. But what happens in an organization when a bully provokes so much anxiety in targets that targets have crippling fear of approaching the bully?

In their Employee Rights and Employee Policy Journal article, Loraleigh Keashly and Joel H. Neuman point to the airline and health care industries to show how fear-based cultures created by toxic bosses can promote not just the deaths of efficiency, effective decision-making, communication, risk-taking, creativity, and innovation, but also people:

Airline industry. “In two separate incidents, in which aircraft personnel felt intimidated by their pilots and fearful of questioning his decisions, aircraft crewmembers failed to correct pilot errors that resulted in two separate air crashes, killing all on board,” they explained.

Health care industry. Nurses are often also reluctant to challenge poor decisions made by...

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