al jazeera launches a new series "hard earned" we hear from hard-working americans about their challenges beginning this sunday. that's our programme. tell us what you think at aljazeera.com/americatonight talk to us on twitter or facebook. come back. we'll have more of "america tonight" tomorrow. i'm "ali velshi on target." a co-worker can make your job a living hell with no law in place to stop them. mental illness, the big secret you'd never tell your boss about for fear of getting fired. unless you are the boss, you have little say in who you work

with. sure, you could leave if you don't like it. it's tough to leave a pay check or the benefits behind these days. if you are being bullied at work, leaving or taking it may be your only options. sexual harass the and employee discrimination to varying degrees has been met by laws and regulations meant to guarantee a minimum of protections for working americans. what about protections for the supposedly 25% of working people who report being bullied in the workplace. the bullied are hardly alone in feeling like they are on their own when it comes to being mistreated. discrimination on the basis of factors like gender race national origin are prohibited in the work place. start talking mental illness, and you find yourself in a grey area those were the diagnosed mental illness feel stigmatised. focused, instead, on the threats

inherent with feeling forced to work alongside those who might be mentally unstable or outright dangerous. i'll have more on that a little later in the show when i catch up with former congressman, a rising star in a political dynasty, ted kennedy. back to bullying i'm not talking about a bad day at work it's repeated emotional and physical abuse, at times, of one co-worker of another employee. in other words the schoolyard bully graduated to the work place. until recently it's been largely a silent epidemic. after the 6 foot 5, 300 pound player left the miami dolphins in 2013, amid accusations of team-mate bullying the phenomena has been attracting attention. this year allow 11 workplace bullying laws have been introduced in 10 states. for now, victims of work place

bullying have no legal recourse. kim graduated from law school in 2006 filled with the promise of a bright future. landing her dream job as a prosecutor in williamson county texas. >> they seemed excited to have me. i was almost hired on the spot. i thought it would be the beginning of something great. >> and at first, it was. >> i loved being in court. i was proud of myself. especially when i won my first case. >> while kim won cases she failed to win over a fellow prosecutor. >> he would do everything in his four make every day of my -- in his power to make every day of my life pure hell. he'd yell at me for being a minute late. he'd tell me i did something wrong, that i didn't really do wrong. he'd blame me for things that he

did, and everyone would believe him more than one in four workers in the u.s. reports being bullied by a co-worker or boss. according to a recent survey from the workplace bullying institute. >> workplace bullying may be repeated yelling and verbal humiliation, hostile declares and silence, deliberate exclusion. >> 80% of those surveyed reporting debilitating anxiety. 30% ptsb and 49% suffered a clinical depression. >> i'm definitely depressed. i'd wake up with a stomach ache. i was supposed to be a powerful important person in the courtroom and i cried in my office more than a cared to admit. >> kim tried to talk to her tormenter, as well as her boss, but the bullying continued until finely a breaking point. >> he was yelling at me for

something. and he didn't like my reaction because i wasn't, you know, apologiseing and begging for forgivefor forgiveness forgiveness, and he started cursing, and he took a white out - one of those white out things and threw it at me fearing for her safety kim quit, joining the ranks of 20% of bullied employees that left their jobs. >> it was one of the most horrible experiences of my professional life clay left his sales position after months of abuse from an unlikely bully. >> we used to call her the black widow. we were convinced she ate her young. it had to be 20 years ago, but feels like it was yesterday. it's like there's a scab that has not field.

>> at 6 foot 4, he is an example of how the work place bully can defy types. >> it was not about physical intil -- intimidation. there's a certain amount of power for a boss knowing they hold the pay check over their head clay endured the abuse because he was the father and a single dad. >> she made comments like kim, craig was abbing selling at his job. >> they are bullying the top producer. the reason they do it is they are bullying the person that the boss is threatened by if craig sounds like an expert he is. >> 40% never say a word.

craig's clients, several fortune 500 counties decline to be on camera. we watched him rehearse his speech. >> a distinguishment around bullying is the behaviour is repeated over and over and over. the first thing torefor me is to get organizations to understand how to take ownership. a lot are hesitant to brand the behaviour as bullying the financial cost of bullying is between 6 and 13 billion. >> it destroys creativity workplace videos are being purchased by companies like wal-mart to carnival cruise linings. katherine became a consultant after an eye-opening experience

as a hr manager at a financial assistance nonprofit. >> i get a lot of complaints because of interacting with the bully katherine was stymied by the refusal to confront the workplace oppressor. >> he had been there for a long time. that's a standard situation in a bullying scenario, that the bully is seen as someone who is needed and a high performer as well. and there was nothing i could do unless the president gave me the okay it's not illegal legislatures in 29 states introduced some form. healthy work place bill holding employers accountable for on the job bullying. currently workplace bullying is not explicitly illegal, until it is specific to behaviour, such as sexual or racial harassment. >> pick up the math ... a handful of states passed

related laws. california's ab 20-53 mandate the prevention of abuse of conduct be included in existing workplace sexual harassment training. >> ab 20-53 include abusive conduct san diego assemblyman brian jones voted against it. >> how do you define work place bullying that's a problem with the bill. how do you define what is bullying and what is banter between two adults those opposed to anti-bullying laws say they'd unleash frivolous lawsuits. >> this happened since the beginning of time. making it illegal or requiring this type of training is not going to change that. >> this is not a suck it up situation. i want people to know that that is not okay. and i need to do something about it.

>> after she resigned in true lawyer fashion, kim painstakingly documented her ordeal. 7 pages of agonising details that she gave to her boss. >> i had written it down and had proof, and she felt comfortable enough to fire him. people started coming out of the woodwork. secretaries, support staff, defense attorneys, former employees. like all of these people that i knew they were saying that he did similar things to them and i was "you saw this happening, why did you not say something until now." despite getting her co-worker fired, kim had no desire to return to her job at the da office, and is doing legal temp work which she nonetheless, and it involves going through documents and no interaction with co-worker. people like kim are looking for legal recourse to help them fight back.

coming up i'll talk to a pan who says changing the law will not do a thing. we are back in 2 minutes.

the workplace bullying institute says one in four u.s. workers is bullied at some point in their careers i'm talking psychological harassment for abuse, abuse to wound an employee with words or actions. it sounds bad, but workplace bullying is not against the law, unless it crosses certain lines, including sexual or racial harassment. 29 state introduced bills holding employers accountable for on the job bullying. opponents say the bills will wreak havoc. employee and labour attorney represents the washington state chamber of commerce in a fight against making workplace bullying illegal. he joins us from seattle.

good to see you. thank you for joining us. >> pleasure to be here. >> few laws that come in that govern businesses are conducting - employees conducting themselves tend to get the warm hug of a chamber of commerce, what is your issue with laws designed in particular the washington state workplace bullying bill that makes it on unfair practice to subject an employee to an abuse of work environment? >> the primary concern is that this bill if it was to become law, is going to lead to a tremendous amount of litigation over perception and will work against things we want to promote in this country. we want entrepreneurs to have a passion, we want businesses to accept high expectations and hold employees to them. we want businesses to become more productive which means asking employees to do more with less, and all of those things

could lead to litigation and dragging employers in front of courts. >> which they should. >> it's a bad idea. >> if companies are condoning bullying, they should be punished. >> well, it's a question of perception much the bill talks about unreasonable workload. and who is to determine what is an unreasonable workload. that means it's a question of the employees perception versus the employers perception, and it's problematic that all the statutes make it an affirmative defense. i don't want to get legalistic, but all of a sudden it's the employers burden to prove actions were taken for legitimate business reasons. >> the bill as written defines abuse of conduct as follows - calling it hostile, offensive and unrelated to an employers' legitimate business interests, where an employee is subjected to repeated conduct that is so severe that it causes physical

or psychological harm to that employees. that is highly specific. >> all the terms, when you take them apart are individual oriented and subject to that employees perception what is an unreasonable set of workplace demands depend on who is viewing it. here in washington something they said is it's a question of whether the supervisor is being fair, and there are few things that are more subjective than that now the employer is going to have to prove that in front of a judge or jury. >> aren't they similar standards to how we prevent people discriminated against on the basis of gender race sexual orientation. it's a determination. one says that someone is causing a hostile work environment, it's a lot of subjective things that have to be proved for the case to prevail. >> but the fundamental difference is that you are going towards the question of the

motivation. are you engaging in harassment because of worker's gender or race. it's the fundamental question of why are you doing it. this means that you have to go in and defend the actual running of your business on a day-to-day basis, it's a different set of standards. >> in 30 years of practice, you haven't given me an number of. maybe it's the boss. >> there are bad bosses out there, but the question is how are you going to go about litigating the employers perception of i'm trying to deal with a bad employee versus the employer's perception that everything is fine. >> there's two sides, you only have one. >> exactly right. >> as far as you are concerned there's two sides. is it possible the other side have a beef. if a quarter of employees say they are bullied, if 170 u.s. businesses identify it as a

problem, at some point we have to solve t. >> every story has two side. >> yes, and you've given me one side. >> you listen to one side. >> i listened to one side because i've been listen to yours. >> it happens all he time. >> i'm trying to see if you recognise there's another side. we can't put it into a law, don't do it you say. i bet people are happy with minorities not treated perfectly, women, gays not treated, because the litigation would be messy. >> no, i don't think that is right. i don't have clients that would subscribe to that idea. here in washington and virtually every other state there's a tort a common law claim referred to as the - different states have different names - intentional infliction of emotional distress. some call it the tort of outrage. if you have someone engaging in conduct that a reasonable person

says that is outrageous you already have a law in tort in every state i know. we don't need to create another, putting the burden on the employer to justify legitimate business reasons. >> that tort is not specifically related to the workplace what you - not all states have that protection either. >> well, with all respect, that tort or a variation on it is in place in most states. it's in place in every state i practice in. it's called different things. either outrage, or the interceptional infliction of emotional distress it is available in the workplace, every bit as much as ifs in other context, and if you have conduct that meets that extreme standard, that is outrageous, you have a cause of access. >> i don't know. i'm hoping over time our minds will change and we'll be more interested in protecting workers than worrying about a few frivolous lawsuits. i hear your lawsuits.

>> good employers want to protect the workers. >> they don't come up because of good employers, they come up because of the bad ones. >> and you are going to subject all of them to litigation over what different employees perceive. it's something the business community can't get goodnight. >> tim o'connell a labour and employment attorney bullying aside, there's a difficult issue that many don't like to talk about, employees suffering mental illness. >> i'm home drinking myself to sleep. and abusing medications, because i'm worried about what people will think if i go to treatment.