Our mission
Make this a crime.
Physical violence is a crime. Theft is a crime. But the slow, calculated destruction of a human being through gossip, mobbing, gaslighting, and engineered isolation? In almost every country on earth, it is treated as a personality conflict. Our long-term goal is to change that, in workplaces, in policy, and in the public conscience. The law is the headline, but it is only one of three things we are working toward: legal recognition, education, and a working culture that stops tolerating this.
The legal record so far
A handful of countries have already made the case that psychological workplace harm deserves consequences. That precedent is the foundation we build on.
Sweden
Among the first countries to address workplace bullying in regulation, via AFS 1993:17, an ordinance on "Victimization at Work" issued by the national labor authority under the Work Environment Act, not a standalone statute.
United Kingdom
Protection from Harassment Act 1997 creates a civil and criminal wrong of harassment, later used as the legal basis for workplace bullying claims.
Source: legislation.gov.uk
United Kingdom
In Green v DB Group Services (UK) Ltd, the High Court finds a "deliberate and concerted campaign of bullying" and awards a bullied employee damages reported at over £800,000.
Source: BAILII: Green v DB Group Services (UK) Ltd [2006] EWHC 1898 (QB)
France
The Social Modernization law (Loi n° 2002-73) introduces criminal and civil liability for "moral harassment" (harcèlement moral) at work, now codified in the Labour Code.
Ireland
Not standalone legislation: a code of practice on workplace bullying is declared under the Industrial Relations Act 1990 in 2002, followed by a revised Health and Safety Authority code in 2007.
Quebec, Canada
The Act respecting labour standards becomes one of the first laws in North America to prohibit "psychological harassment" at work by name.
Source: LégisQuébec: Act respecting labour standards, s. 81.18
Ontario, Canada
Bill 168 amends the Occupational Health and Safety Act (Part III.0.1) to add explicit employer duties around workplace violence and workplace harassment.
Further reading: Legal aspects of workplace bullying
Beyond the courtroom
A law is a last resort. It matters because it says, in public, that this harm is real. But most of the damage is done long before anyone thinks of calling a lawyer: in classrooms where nobody has yet been taught to recognize the pattern, and in companies whose culture quietly makes room for it. So the mission has two more parts, and neither of them needs a courtroom.
Teach it before it starts
Workplace toxicity should be taught, by name, in schools and as a standard part of university curricula, especially wherever future managers are trained. People who can recognize mobbing, gaslighting, and engineered isolation before their first job are far less likely to suffer them in silence, and far less likely to become the ones doing it.
Make it unwelcome at work
Workplaces should carry enough shared awareness, and enough plain structure (clear policy, real accountability, honest records), that toxic behavior simply doesn't pay. Once a culture stops tolerating it, the correction takes care of itself: either the behavior changes over time, or the organization parts ways with the person. Not because anyone takes matters into their own hands, but because the structure around them no longer bends to make room for it.
These two are goals we are working toward, not things we can point to yet. The timeline above is a record; this section is a direction.
Where we're starting
We are not a law firm, a lobbying group, or a licensed clinical practice. Anti Toxic People starts smaller than that, and more useful right now: giving the behaviors a name, sourced to real research, so the people living through them stop mistaking a documented pattern for a personal failing. That's the same groundwork every jurisdiction on the timeline above needed before its law could be written: a shared vocabulary and a public record that this is a real, recurring harm, not an isolated personality conflict.
Name it
Sourced Field Guide entries, growing steadily, each traceable to a real study, book, or legal case, not invented terminology.
Document it
Concrete, practical techniques (contemporaneous records, the grey rock method, knowing when to escalate) for building your own record, whether or not you ever go further with it.
Track the record
The legal timeline above is a living list. As more countries and cases set precedent, this page will grow with them.
This is early, and it is one person's project, not a funded institution.
If that changes, it will be because enough people found this useful enough to say so. Following along costs nothing and commits you to nothing else.
Join the circle to follow along