u/Street_Ad3324

TLDR - I found out recently from watching Bob Stenhouse interviews that in Ontario, Canada, if someone reports bullying or harassment, the employer is obligated to investigate it whether there is an individual complaint or not - that the person who submits the information just becomes a reporter and the workplace can conduct an employer initiated investigation.

It feels like my workplace pushed me into filing an individual grievance so that they could hire an external investigator to investigate only me as opposed to the documentation I gave them - and in the process, they traumatized me so badly I don't know how I will go back to work there again.

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I am quite overwhelmed with the experience I have had in my workplace. Without getting into the full details, I experienced what seems to be "workplace bullying" (I had no idea this was a thing before experiencing it and began trauma-informed therapy (I have been diagnosed with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and anxiety and depression. I became unable to do my job and am on long term disability leave).

There are A LOT of things that have happened and I really wish I could get someone knowledgeable to sit down with me to make sense of it all. But basically, I began using my vacation days and sick days in March to try to figure out what was going on with me. I began seeing a trauma-informed therapist twice a week.

I had put together documentation that detailed my experiences over a 6 month period - which dovetailed with the experiences of several of my colleagues - and we all went to the union together in mid-March to see if the union could help us because it seemed like something was wrong (new upper management had been hired just before all this started and that's when everything changed. My colleagues are in their own teams so they are slightly more shielded from what has been happening - my role has definitely been the one most intensely impacted because my role is isolated and managed by a head, but was being micromanaged by a director. It's like they were ganging up on me and the power dynamics coupled with the isolation were making it impossible to work).

People had been coming to work and crying, colleagues were telling me they were having nightmares about work, they were saying things like they no longer enjoyed their jobs anymore and several of them have now begun looking for work elsewhere.

The union told us we could file a collective grievance but was not very helpful in terms of explaining what in the documentation constituted a grievance and how it would work. I never heard back about whether or not it would move forward. I later heard all my colleagues were too afraid and exhausted to proceed. One has since quit.

Because my therapist had flagged that I was having trauma symptoms and that what I was describing sounded like workplace bullying that was impacting me in an amplified way due to my being adhd and autistic - I didn't really know how to proceed. I went back to the union and told them my therapist had advised against me returning to work under the same dynamic I was in (isolated role with an unofficial split dual reporting structure). I asked the union how a grievance for harassment would be able to address workplace bullying as opposed to harassment since workplace bullying is pattern based, takes place over a long period, has a lot of plausible deniability and from what I had read, is currently not addressed effectively under current processes unions and workplaces use.

The union couldn't answer my question.

Given I was running out of paid time off, I went back to HR and they told me that if I handed in the documentation, it would trigger an internal investigation (if they found something that looked wrong) and I would be given interim change in line management to return to work while the investigation took place.

At first this is what was set to happen - they emailed me and told me I could return to work with interim change in line management while an investigation proceeded, gave me a date and I confirmed in writing that I agreed to that arrangement.

From here things become a shit show over the next several months - so many things happened it's impossible for me to detail here. They met with me before returning to work, told me I could not have the interim line management change and that the documentation mentioned too many people. And they began funnelling me into a convoluted, horrible, stressful process pressuring me into filing an individual complaint or an individual grievance while simultaneously telling me what is in my documentation isn't sufficient for either one of those because it was too complex with too many details and too many people mentioned.

I became so overwhelmed all my trauma symptoms became so much worse and I became dysfunctional. I could hardly speak in meetings without breaking down into tears and shaking and sobbing. It felt like they were trying to change my reality if what had happened and put me in a position where I had to constantly defend that what had happened to me had been traumatic (for example, at one point the executive director said what was in my documentation could just be "management style" and that she couldn't see the problem, which didn't make me feel confident in any choice about filing a complaint or grievance).

I sent several emails over the months explaining that I was feeling overwhelmed and confused and didn't understand what was happening. By this time I was on unpaid leave since all my paid days off were gone (and I'm a single mom with expensive rent so this in and of itself was amplifying the stress). The workplace was sending emails reminding me of this and advising I "come back to work" despite being in a debated state.

I then got a consultation with an employment lawyer who looked through my document and confirmed absolutely the union grievance process could address what was in there and advised me to go through the union and file. He advised me on what to file on and what to put in it. He said the grievance could be put into absence if I went on long term disability leave.

The union filed the grievance and as soon as they did, the workplace began emailing me again telling me an external investigation would now be run into my complaint by a lawyer they hired, that the investigation would impact my grievance, that my documentation was insufficient and went back to pressuring me to change the documentation to be more incident based.

The external investigator has emailed me with this long thing to sign that I don't understand. The union has been completely unhelpful.

I am so dysfunctional I have absolutely no idea how I would be able to participate in an investigation as now the process itself has become traumatic. I can barely answer emails about anything to do with it - my brain just goes blank and I lose my words. I start to panic not knowing if what I say will make things worse.

I feel so alone. I don't have any money for another lawyer consult.

I found out recently from watching Bob Stenhouse interviews that in Ontario, Canada, if someone reports bullying or harassment, the employer is obligated to investigate it whether there is an individual complaint or not - that the person who submits the information just becomes a reporter and the workplace can conduct an employer initiated investigation.

It feels like they pushed me into filing an individual grievance so that they could hire an external investigator to investigate only me as opposed to the documentation I gave them - and in the process, they traumatized me so badly I don't know how I will go back to work there again.

TLDR - I found out recently from watching Bob Stenhouse interviews that in Ontario, Canada, if someone reports bullying or harassment, the employer is obligated to investigate it whether there is an individual complaint or not - that the person who submits the information just becomes a reporter and the workplace can conduct an employer initiated investigation.

It feels like my workplace pushed me into filing an individual grievance so that they could hire an external investigator to investigate only me as opposed to the documentation I gave them - and in the process, they traumatized me so badly I don't know how I will go back to work there again.

------------

I am quite overwhelmed with the experience I have had in my workplace. Without getting into the full details, I experienced what seems to be "workplace bullying" (I had no idea this was a thing before experiencing it and began trauma-informed therapy (I have been diagnosed with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and anxiety and depression. I became unable to do my job and am on long term disability leave).

There are A LOT of things that have happened and I really wish I could get someone knowledgeable to sit down with me to make sense of it all. But basically, I began using my vacation days and sick days in March to try to figure out what was going on with me. I began seeing a trauma-informed therapist twice a week.

I had put together documentation that detailed my experiences over a 6 month period - which dovetailed with the experiences of several of my colleagues - and we all went to the union together in mid-March to see if the union could help us because it seemed like something was wrong (new upper management had been hired just before all this started and that's when everything changed. My colleagues are in their own teams so they are slightly more shielded from what has been happening - my role has definitely been the one most intensely impacted because my role is isolated and managed by a head, but was being micromanaged by a director. It's like they were ganging up on me and the power dynamics coupled with the isolation were making it impossible to work).

People had been coming to work and crying, colleagues were telling me they were having nightmares about work, they were saying things like they no longer enjoyed their jobs anymore and several of them have now begun looking for work elsewhere.

The union told us we could file a collective grievance but was not very helpful in terms of explaining what in the documentation constituted a grievance and how it would work. I never heard back about whether or not it would move forward. I later heard all my colleagues were too afraid and exhausted to proceed. One has since quit.

Because my therapist had flagged that I was having trauma symptoms and that what I was describing sounded like workplace bullying that was impacting me in an amplified way due to my being adhd and autistic - I didn't really know how to proceed. I went back to the union and told them my therapist had advised against me returning to work under the same dynamic I was in (isolated role with an unofficial split dual reporting structure). I asked the union how a grievance for harassment would be able to address workplace bullying as opposed to harassment since workplace bullying is pattern based, takes place over a long period, has a lot of plausible deniability and from what I had read, is currently not addressed effectively under current processes unions and workplaces use.

The union couldn't answer my question.

Given I was running out of paid time off, I went back to HR and they told me that if I handed in the documentation, it would trigger an internal investigation (if they found something that looked wrong) and I would be given interim change in line management to return to work while the investigation took place.

At first this is what was set to happen - they emailed me and told me I could return to work with interim change in line management while an investigation proceeded, gave me a date and I confirmed in writing that I agreed to that arrangement.

From here things become a shit show over the next several months - so many things happened it's impossible for me to detail here. They met with me before returning to work, told me I could not have the interim line management change and that the documentation mentioned too many people. And they began funnelling me into a convoluted, horrible, stressful process pressuring me into filing an individual complaint or an individual grievance while simultaneously telling me what is in my documentation isn't sufficient for either one of those because it was too complex with too many details and too many people mentioned.

I became so overwhelmed all my trauma symptoms became so much worse and I became dysfunctional. I could hardly speak in meetings without breaking down into tears and shaking and sobbing. It felt like they were trying to change my reality if what had happened and put me in a position where I had to constantly defend that what had happened to me had been traumatic (for example, at one point the executive director said what was in my documentation could just be "management style" and that she couldn't see the problem, which didn't make me feel confident in any choice about filing a complaint or grievance).

I sent several emails over the months explaining that I was feeling overwhelmed and confused and didn't understand what was happening. By this time I was on unpaid leave since all my paid days off were gone (and I'm a single mom with expensive rent so this in and of itself was amplifying the stress). The workplace was sending emails reminding me of this and advising I "come back to work" despite being in a debated state.

I then got a consultation with an employment lawyer who looked through my document and confirmed absolutely the union grievance process could address what was in there and advised me to go through the union and file. He advised me on what to file on and what to put in it. He said the grievance could be put into absence if I went on long term disability leave.

The union filed the grievance and as soon as they did, the workplace began emailing me again telling me an external investigation would now be run into my complaint by a lawyer they hired, that the investigation would impact my grievance, that my documentation was insufficient and went back to pressuring me to change the documentation to be more incident based.

The external investigator has emailed me with this long thing to sign that I don't understand. The union has been completely unhelpful.

I am so dysfunctional I have absolutely no idea how I would be able to participate in an investigation as now the process itself has become traumatic. I can barely answer emails about anything to do with it - my brain just goes blank and I lose my words. I start to panic not knowing if what I say will make things worse.

I feel so alone. I don't have any money for another lawyer consult.

I found out recently from watching Bob Stenhouse interviews that in Ontario, Canada, if someone reports bullying or harassment, the employer is obligated to investigate it whether there is an individual complaint or not - that the person who submits the information just becomes a reporter and the workplace can conduct an employer initiated investigation.

It feels like they pushed me into filing an individual grievance so that they could hire an external investigator to investigate only me as opposed to the documentation I gave them - and in the process, they traumatized me so badly I don't know how I will go back to work there again.

Does anyone know of any modern researchers or investigators or studies that focus on infiltration of activist organizations - but specifically the covert type that go in and actually work inside the org/group/institution (like as an employee or groups of employees) and destabilize from within using covert tactics that have plausible deniability/are hard to prove but over time, effectively destroy the group’s ability to function or cause its collapse entirely?

I am NOT looking for the historical research on infiltrations, such as those that involved strictly spying or intelligence gathering (such as the instances in the UK where some of the under cover agents formed long term relationships with employees or group members) and NOT research on the more explicit kinds of infiltration where there are agent provocateurs at protests etc. I have already looked into all that including things like COINTELPRO.

I am specifically looking for information or for people who are tracking current situations on covert internal destabilization.

Does anyone have know of any modern researchers or investigators or studies that focus on infiltration of activist organizations - but specifically the covert type that go in and actually work inside the org/group/institution (like as an employee or groups of employees) and destabilize from within using covert tactics that have plausible deniability/are hard to prove but over time, effectively destroy the groups ability to function or cause its collapse entirely?

I am NOT looking for the historical research on infiltrations that involved strictly intelligence gathering by forming long term relationships with employees or group members and not research on the more explicit kinds of infiltration where there are agent provocateurs at protests etc.

I am specifically looking for information or for people who are tracking current situations on covert internal destabilization.

I recently came across two Politico articles about what happened at 350.org between 2019-2022 (sounds like the problems continued after and are still occurring as the US office has suspended its operations).

The articles are titled: “The group that brought down Keystone XL faces agonies of its own” and “Justice or overreach: As crucial test looms, Big Greens are under fire.“

I was particularly struck by the parts about overwork, underpay and the crisis in workplace bullying:

“[T]he organization has now let a toxic culture of bullying, favoritism, intimidation, and retaliation continue despite numerous staff raising concerns, making formal HR complaints, and massive staff losses in the past year,” Leonard wrote in the email. “350.org has created working conditions so intolerable that it reasonably expects will lead to staff resignations.”

>> This is probably a long shot, but I’m wondering if anyone worked there between 2019 and 2025?

The reason I’m asking is a couple of people joined upper management at my non-profit recently who were upper management at 350 during that time.

And the patterns described in these articles is remarkably consistent with what is unfolding now in my workplace. I won’t get into details, but the difference in my workplace before these people arrived vs after is stunning. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.

It feels so extreme that it honestly to god feels orchestrated/coordinated to slow work down/stop work from getting done (high performing employees are targeted and ways of working/coordinating have been completely overturned and redesigned that the chaos and confusion generated means that needed work for the bottom line literally does not get completed).

I have been documenting absolutely everything because I recognized pretty much right away that something was off. Throughout the months of research I’ve been doing, I came across something called the “CIA field manual” that literally lays out a strategy for destroying workplaces from the inside. This sounds paranoid (and maybe it is) but every single one of the bullet points with the exception of one have been happening at my workplace. I am not a conspiratorial person - I’m extremely logical and fact-based.

I would not be raising this if I was not certain that I’m seeing a pattern of SOME kind unfolding.

I would really love to connect with a former employee who experienced what took place at 350.org.