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What is moral harassment?

Moral harassment, as a legal notion, is only applied to relationships in the workplace. It concerns repeated behavior destined to degrade the working conditions of the victim. As a known or only foreseeable consequence, it can affect the rights, the dignity, the health or even the professional future of the victim.
Mediation, recourse to the work inspection office, legal action through conciliation and/or penal... : several solutions are now possible for you to defend yourself

Work Code and Penal Code

Established by the law of social modernization dated January 17, 2002; moral harassment has made its entrance into the work code and the penal code. Moral harassment is now punishable by a sentence of up to one year imprisonment and a 15.000   fine. Sanctions, firings and other "discriminatory measures" resulting from harassment are considered worthless. The law is applied to the entire workforce: private sector and public administrations, hierarchical harassment and harassment between colleagues.

Which jurisdiction should be addressed?

The victim can demand justice directly by addressing: the conciliation board of the industrial tribune to ask for the voiding of the interruption of the work contract or any other measure which results from harassment, the district court for criminal charges. In the case of a dispute before the conciliation board, the victim must show proof of corroborating concrete acts. It is up to the person accused of harassment to prove that the acts do not constitute harassment. The victim can be represented by a trade union representative from the company, provided she or he has given written agreement.
Before a criminal judge, it is up to the state prosecutor to show proof against the accused; the victim can sue for punitive damages.


What can you do before pursuing legal action?

Other issues before pursuing legal action: a person who believes oneself a victim of moral harassment in the workplace can request the intervention of an inspector or of an industrial doctor.
Recent news, the law provides for the intervention of a mediator in matters of moral harassment. Selected from outside the company, the mediator is chosen from a list compiled by the police in each department. He can also intervene in the case of sexual harassment, sanctioned by law since 1992 (see preceding pages in this section).

Protection of the victim and of the witness

The law means to protect the victim of moral harassment at work and the witnesses that denonce this behavior. It forbids any and all professional sanctions against the witness "for having witnessed this type of behaviour and having reported it".

Not everything is necessarily harassment ...

Sometimes, it may be just an isolated incident or even just conflicts, disagreements which generate tension but which is not however harassment behavior; in certain cases, it may lead to a sanction or even termination. This may be the case for example when an employee him or herself provokes suspicious reactions from his or her colleagues or refuses to discuss a situation.
Be careful then not to confuse responsibilities that stem from hierarchy (meaning the work contract), the employer's right to command, his demands, from real harassment in the workplace.

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