At work and in grave danger

On the same day that Republican members of Congress were shot by a madman at baseball practice — none fatally, thank God — three employees at a UPS packing facility in San Francisco were murdered at gunpoint by an irate co-worker named Jimmy Lam, who then turned the gun on himself and raised the death toll to four.

The nation shrugged, and moved on. Priests and politicians grimaced as the cameras rolled, ritualistically assuring the public they are praying for the dead and their families. We need less prayer and more policy. Workplace violence, which claims hundreds of lives every year and injures tens of thousands more, has become a grotesquely normal part of life in America. A little focused attention by government, private industry and the general public would go a long way toward stemming the tide.

More than once a day, on average, someone is murdered at an American workplace. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the number at 417 in 2015, up from 403 the year before.

There’s a good chance you’ve already forgotten, or never knew, that earlier this month an enraged ex-worker methodically stalked and killed five people — and then himself — at a company in Orlando that makes awnings for recreational vehicles.

You’ve probably forgotten about the man who killed two former co-workers and then himself at an Equinox fitness center in Miami in May.

And there’s little chance New Yorkers ever heard about a 26-year-old man named Cody Thurman who was shot to death by a co-worker at a truck repair company in tiny Catoosa, Okla., on May 30.

If fatalities barely make the news, the staggering number of acts of nonlethal attacks that take place at workplaces — nearly 2 million every year, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — are even more invisible.

“It has gotten worse, and it’s becoming an epidemic,” attorney and workplace violence expert Kathleen Bonczyk told the Orlando Sentinel after the latest killing. “There used to be a time when an employee shooting someone in the workplace would be a shock. Now it’s becoming common.”

Bonczyk, who is compiling cases under the provocative title “The Killer in the Next Cubicle,” is right to sound the alarm. But business leaders, along with state and federal government bodies, need to enact some easy, common-sense measures to address workplace violence.

There’s a broad consensus that potentially violent or emotionally disturbed employees often tip their hand well in advance. John Robert Neumann, the killer in Orlando, had a record that included lower-level offenses like DUI and drug possession — but deputies had been called to the factory several years ago because Neumann was accused, but not arrested or fired, for allegedly battering another employee.

Back in 2013, before a man named Aaron Alexis killed 12 of his fellow employees, he’d talked about hearing voices and having a chip implanted in his head. And an organization called the Workplace Bullying Institute claims that a survey found 72% of employees were aware of bullying on the job.

Clearly, some companies need to step up their ability to evaluate employees for potential violence. Other employees need training in how to detect, defuse, report — and, if necessary, escape from — dangerous co-workers.

Under the Obama administration, OSHA began the multiyear process of implementing regulations to ensure companies are aware of best practices to prevent workplace violence. It remains unclear how much of this early work will be continued by the Trump administration, which has not yet appointed a leader to run the agency. The administration has called for a 21% cut in the budget of the Department of Labor, of which OSHA is a part. With the prospect of little or help from Washington, California has taken the lead in pioneering state standards to address workplace violence in the field of health care, where a largely female workforce has long been subjected to violence by patients, domestic partners and others.

This hodgepodge approach is a national scandal. We should be compiling, measuring and publicly discussing the hundreds of thousands of cases involving bullying, coercion and other forms of aggression at various workplaces.

As long as beatings, shootings and injuries in the workplace are treated as somebody else’s problem, we’ll continue to see preventable massacres pop up every few weeks.