I wrote to my colleagues because I had no other option left.
By that point, I was not raising a concern. I was trying to stop something that was already happening to me — repeatedly, relentlessly, and without intervention.
It was sustained conduct.
It was escalating.
And it was happening inside a workplace that had a legal obligation to ensure my safety.
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I used the word mobbing in my communication, and I stand by that.
People often hesitate when they hear that word, as though it is too strong. But there are situations where anything less would be dishonest.
I had already tried to resolve things through formal channels. I had reported the conduct. I had asked for intervention. I had tried to work within the systems that are supposed to protect workers.
Nothing stopped it.
So I turned to the people around me.
These were not strangers. These were not external bodies.
These were my colleagues.
The people who worked alongside me.
The people who knew me.
The people who were part of the same workplace that was supposed to be safe.
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I asked them to speak up, because work health and safety is everyone’s responsibility.
I asked for the harassment to stop.
I asked for the unlawful conduct to stop.
I asked for the agreed injury management process to be implemented.
I asked for my entitlements to be restored.
What I encountered instead was silence.
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What people do not see — what they do not experience unless they are in it — is how quickly psychological harm escalates when nothing changes.
It does not stay contained.
It builds.
It alters how you think, how you function, how you engage.
I reached a point where I could not even open messages without fear of what I would find.
That is what prolonged exposure to harm looks like.
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And still, I kept trying to find a way forward.
I suggested safer ways to communicate.
I asked for someone to call me.
I tried to create conditions where I could engage without being retraumatised.
Because my goal never changed.
I wanted to return to my job.
With dignity.
With my entitlements restored.
With a safe work environment in place.
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Legal Accountability — WHS Duties vs Conduct
Workplace safety is a legal obligation.
What occurred was not a breakdown in communication.
It was conduct that must be assessed against statutory duties.
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Under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), employers must:
- Provide and maintain a safe work environment
- Eliminate or minimise psychosocial hazards
- Consult with workers
- Respond to risks to health and safety
What occurred instead:
- Sustained harassment and mobbing
- Psychological harm allowed to escalate
- Concerns dismissed or ignored
- No meaningful intervention
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Under the Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW):
- Injury management plans must be implemented
- Return-to-work must be supported
- Entitlements must be provided
What occurred instead:
- Injury management plan not implemented
- Return-to-work support withheld
- Entitlements not paid
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Additional protections:
- Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)
- Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 (NSW)
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This is conduct measured against legal obligations.
Where those obligations are not met, serious questions arise.
These are breaches that go to the core of safety, dignity, and accountability.
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The harm was not only in what was done.
It was in what was not done.
The absence of intervention.
The absence of support.
The absence of people willing to step in.
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I should never have had to ask my own colleagues to help make my workplace safe.
That should have already existed.
That should have been protected.
That should never have been taken from me.
And the institutionalised wage theft continued…
Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 251-252.
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Additional Context — Mobbing, Workplace Harm, and the Collapse of Organisational Culture
The issues raised in this post align closely with established international research on workplace mobbing and its destructive impact on workers, organisational culture, and psychological safety.
In their peer-reviewed open access study, Mobbing in a Workplace and Its Negative Influence on Building Quality Culture, researchers Martina Minárová, Dana Benčíková and Denisa Malá examined how mobbing behaviours damage not only individuals, but entire workplace cultures.
The paper explains that mobbing involves repeated psychological attacks, humiliation, isolation, gossiping, excessive criticism, pressure, and efforts to undermine or socially exclude a worker. The authors note that these behaviours often emerge in workplaces where there is a failure between what organisations publicly claim to value and how they actually behave in practice.
That contradiction is central to my own experience.
The study emphasises that organisational culture is not defined by mission statements or public messaging alone, but by whether management actually lives those values through action, communication, and protection of workers.
The research findings are confronting.
Among surveyed workers who experienced mobbing:
- most reported humiliation, mockery, criticism, pressure, insults, and exclusion;
- 92% stated the experience negatively affected the quality of their work;
- many were afraid to report the conduct because they feared losing their jobs;
- and more than half did not believe management would help if concerns were raised.
The paper also identifies that mobbing frequently escalates where there is:
- poor managerial intervention,
- lack of trust,
- weak communication, and
- failure to establish protective systems for workers.
That mirrors exactly what this blog post describes.
Perhaps most confronting of all is the research cited within the paper linking prolonged workplace mobbing to serious psychological injury, trauma, collapse of self-worth, and suicide risk.
This is why psychosocial hazards cannot be dismissed as “personality issues” or interpersonal conflict.
The consequences are real.
The harm is real.
And when organisations fail to intervene — or when colleagues remain silent while harmful conduct escalates — the workplace itself becomes unsafe.
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Reference
Minárová, M., Benčíková, D. and Malá, D. (2020). ‘Mobbing in a Workplace and Its Negative Influence on Building Quality Culture’. The 19th International Scientific Conference Globalization and its Socio-Economic Consequences 2019 – Sustainability in the Global-Knowledge Economy v.74.
Open access article available at:
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