Workplace Violence: Examining Interpersonal and Impersonal Violence among Truck Drivers

• Author: Katie Lindsay,Garry Gray
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12134
• Published date: 01 July 2019
• Date: 01 July 2019

Workplace Violence: Examining Interpersonal and

Impersonal Violence among Truck Drivers

GARRY GRAY and KATIE LINDSAY

Employees who work alone are at greater risk of workplace violence. One of the higher-risk

lone worker occupations in North America is truck driving. Drawing on interviews with

158 truck drivers across the United States and Canada, this article examines how truck drivers

interpret and experience both interpersonal and impersonal forms of workplace violence.

Rather than rely on police enforcement and safety regulations, the truck drivers in this study

believed that they were primarily on their own with regard to workplace violence. As a result,

truck drivers described how they continually engage in informal personal safety strategies in

order to decrease their chances of being victimized. These findings reveal how neoliberal

responsibilization approaches to health and safety serve to conceal structural patterns of power

and risk by containing individual responsibility for safety at the frontline. Overall, this study

points to the need for law and policy to better incorporate the frontline experiences of workers

when attempting to decrease the risk of workplace violence.

I. INTRODUCTION

Workplace violence is often defined in an inclusive way to encompass not only physical

violence but also verbal abuse, bullying, intimidation, and threats. An inclusive defini-

tion is useful because it acknowledges individuals’ subjective experiences of workplace

violence. In turn, this acknowledgment creates a platform for greater public policy

engagement and for discussions about negative behaviors that have historically been

downplayed (such as workplace bullying). While some have cautioned against an inclu-

sive definition of workplace violence (cf. Waddington, Badger, and Bull 2004), we go

further in our definition of workplace violence to include both “interpersonal violence”

and “impersonal violence.” There are many benefits to an inclusive definition, particu-

larly how it draws greater attention to serious harms committed by certain members of

society. Historically, one need only to go back to Edwin Sutherland’s critique of main-

stream criminology in his infamous 1939 speech in Philadelphia in which he challenged

criminologists and social scientists to take seriously the harms caused by white-collar

criminals. The publication of this speech (Sutherland 1940) facilitated the creation of a

conceptual term that researchers could draw upon when examining harmful actions

committed by trusted professionals and more powerful members of society, regardless of

whether or not such violations were included in a criminal code.

Address correspondence to: Garry Gray, University of Victoria, COR A333, 3800 Finnerty Road, Victoria,

British Columbia V8P 5C2, Canada. Telephone: 250-853-3772; Email: gcgray@uvic.ca.

LAW & POLICY, Vol. 41, No. 3,

©2019 The Authors

Law & Policy ©2019 The University of Denver/Colorado Seminary

doi: 10.1111/lapo.12134

ISSN 0265-8240