🟥 When the Wounds Go Sideways Horizontal Violence, Threat Dynamics, and the Human Breakdown Inside Workers’ Compensation

Nov 7, 2025

3 min read

Two people in an office look stressed, covering their faces. A bright crack divides the scene, symbolizing tension. Papers are scattered.

This post was prompted by a recent meeting we had with a senior executive inside the workers’ compensation system. In the middle of the discussion, he mentioned, almost casually that he had received death threats from members of the injured worker community.

We were shocked, and said so.

His response?

“It goes with the territory.”

No. It doesn’t. Violence is not “part of the job” it is a sign of a system in psychological collapse.

We are also aware of reports of customer-facing staff at the NSW workers’ comp regulator being stalked or harassed online.

That is not acceptable either.

So let me be absolutely clear at the start:

Anger at injustice is justified. Violence, in any direction — is not.

The problem is not “bad people.” The problem is a system that produces trauma, abandonment and despair and then leaves people alone inside it.

“We write this not to shame any injured worker, but because we will never allow the system to weaponise pain against individuals harmed.”

And to be absolutely clear: We do not claim to speak for injured workers. Their pain is real, justified, and the system is responsible for it.

When people are retraumatised, disbelieved, financially destabilised, surveilled, abandoned, and driven into existential crisis, some break inward, and some break outward. That is a design failure, not a character flaw. Be cler on that. People break.

The injured are not the threat. The conditions are the threat. Fix the conditions, and the risk dissolves.

What Is Horizontal Violence In Workers' Compensation?

The term comes from nursing and trauma literature. It refers to aggression, hostility or intimidation between people on the same level not top-down authority.

One definition describes it as:

“Behaviour directed by one peer toward another that harms, disrespects and devalues the worth of the recipient while denying them their right to dignity.”— Purpora, Journal of Nursing Care Quality (2012)https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3357606/

Studies show horizontal violence is strongly linked to anxiety, depression, PTSD and organisational breakdown. (BMC Nursing, 2024 — Wei et al.) https://bmcnurs.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12912-024-02408-8

Now apply that to a workers’ compensation system where:

people are already psychologically injured
legitimacy is constantly questioned
claims are adversarial by design
support is delayed, rationed, or denied
surveillance replaces care
isolation replaces community

You have a perfect environment for relational harm.

How It Shows Up in Workers’ Compensation

Injured workers turning on other injured workers

Peer spaces becoming sites of comparison, hostility or suspicion

Claimants directing rage at frontline staff or executives

Staff emotionally armouring, going numb

Executives normalising threats as “part of the job”

Trauma becoming horizontal, not just vertical

“When safety collapses, everyone becomes someone else’s threat.”

When It Escalates: Real-World Warning Signs

These two examples show what happens when systemic harm meets unmanaged grievance.

United States — 2024

Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed in what prosecutors described as a targeted grievance-based attack linked to insurance system failures. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/17/luigi-mangione-indicted-murder-brian-thompson

Australia — Darwin, 2010

A claimant wheeled a trolley of petrol cans and fireworks into the Territory Insurance Office (TIO) and detonated it, injuring 15 people. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-02-03/trolley-fire-attack-leaves-15-injured/320956

These are outliers, but outliers are signals.

When a system repeatedly harms people, provides no dignity, and removes all avenues for justice, escalation is not “random.” It is predictable.

Who Is the Problem?

Not the injured

Not frontline workers

Not claim managers

Not individual executives

The problem is the structure, a system that makes sustained psychological harm normal.

If you are an injured worker who has ever been pushed to the edge, this post is not attacking you. It is defending you from the conditions that pushed you there.

If you work inside the system and have ever felt unsafe, this post is not blaming the injured. It is calling out the system that abandoned your safety too.