If bullying endangers a worker's health causing stress or any other physical harm, a corporation can be found liable for not providing a safe place for their employees to work.
[5] On 13 December 2007, MPP Andrea Horwath introduced for first reading a new Bill, Bill-29, to make an amendment to the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act.
[8] The Canadian Province of Saskatchewan made workplace bullying illegal in 2007 by passing The Occupational Health and Safety (Harassment Prevention) Amendment Act, 2007.
The Code of Practice provides both employer and employee with the means and the machinery to identify and to stamp out bullying in the workplace in a way which benefits all sides.
In Spain, within the public administration, activities including preventing access to opportunities, physical or social isolation, withholding necessary information, keeping the target out of the loop, ignoring or excluding, if permanent and for a long time, are considered labor harassment and have to be prosecuted.
[11] Workplace bullying in Sweden is covered by the Ordinance of the Swedish National Board of Occupational Safety and Health containing Provisions on measures against Victimization at Work, which defines victimisation as "...recurrent reprehensible or distinctly negative actions which are directed against individual employees in an offensive manner and can result in those employees being placed outside the workplace community".
Notable cases include Majrowski v Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Trust[14] wherein it was held that an employer is vicariously liable for one employee's harassment of another, and Green v DB Group Services (UK) Ltd,[15] where a bullied worker was awarded over £800,000 in damages.
In the latter case, at paragraph 99, the judge Mr Justice Owen said "I am satisfied that the behaviour amounted to a deliberate and concerted campaign of bullying within the ordinary meaning of that term."
It was argued, following the obiter comments of Lord Hoffmann in Johnson v Unisys Ltd in March 2001,[16][17] that claims could be made before an Employment Tribunal for injury to feelings arising from unfair dismissal.
It was re-established that this was not what the law provided, in Dunnachie v Kingston upon Hull City Council, July 2004[18] wherein the Lords confirmed that the position established in Norton Tool v Tewson in 1972, that compensation for unfair dismissal was limited to financial loss alone.
The compensatory award element for "ordinary" unfair dismissal is subject to a statutory cap set, from February 2014, at the lower of £76574 or 12 months gross pay.
Since the Access to Justice act, "collective conditional fees" have blurred the distinction causing controversy for example in the case of Unison v Jervis.