Harassing

History of the concept of harassing

Psychological harassing in school

Moral and sexual harassing with work

The phenomenon was popularized in France and in the French-speaking world by the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Marie-France Hirigoyen. Its book moral harassing published in 1998 revealed moral harassing with the media and caused a vast movement of identification and appropriation; there many victims finding a name and an explanation to their suffering. Using many testimonys of readers and an investigation, Hirigoyen Marie-France published in 2001 a second book, Malaise in work , where it specifies the concept and examines the context of the intrigues of moral harassing and the relationship between the various approaches of the phenomenon. Following these books and of their press coverage, moral harassing finally was the subject of a specific law in France in 2003.

Similar phenomena already had been described a few years before by the psychological Swedish Heinz Leymann, in its book Mobbing (1993). In the same way that in France with the work of Hirigoyen Marie-France, this publication led to a media mobilization and a specific law. Many research in the Scandinavian countries and in Germany relates to this concept of mobbing .

Hirigoyen defines moral harassing as: “ very led abusive which appears in particular by behaviors, words, acts, gestures, writings, being able to attack the personality, to the dignity or the physical integrity or psychological of a person, putting in danger the use of this one or degrading the social climate. ”

Concerned of an operational definition of the concept, Leymann lists forty behaviors of aggression which, if they are repeated at least once per week throughout one six month, constitute a mobbing . This definition, if it with the advantage of being more concrete than that of Hirigoyen Marie-France, excludes however certain behaviors (for example less frequent, or over one duration lower than six months) which can be also destroying.

Another difference between mobbing and moral harassing relates to the relationship between harassing and conflict. For Leymann, the mobbing is a conflict which degenerates, whereas for Hirigoyen moral harassing rises precisely from the impossibility which have the speakers to assume an opened conflict, psychologically less harmful.

With the difference in other types of violence to work, psychological harassing is thus not specific. It is about a dynamic process made up of various types of intrigues which develop in time. When one analyzes each act separately, one is likely to standardize this underhand form of Violence, because each act can seem inoffensive.

However, to analyze psychological harassing with work, it is necessary to use two methods of measurement:

the first (indirect) considers the duration and the frequency of the intrigues.
the second (direct) is made starting from a definition of psychological harassing followed by questions which aim at establishing the type of existing bond between the guarantors and psychological harassing with work.

Since the precarious worker while passing by the supervisors and the Framework S, whatever the age (young people or older) and the sex (man or woman), nobody are with the shelter of psychological harassing. Without any doubt, like underlined it the philosopher Michel Foucault: “ They are there facts of an extreme banality, which everyone knows. But it is not because they are banals that they do not exist ”, or that they do not have the force to break a person psychologically.

Legal treatment

In France

Moral harassing became in France a specific offense since 2002. He was often called upon since in the businesses judged by the courts of arbitration, in particular the procedures of Licenciement. Many employees describe to them Licenciement like the result of a process of moral harassing. They are presented in front of the judges like victims, the received warnings of the direction having the appearance of an evidence of the undergone pressures. In certain cases, the parts are obvious: removal of telephone, cupboard of arrangement, even of office… Others are more delicate to appreciate.

Certain judges and certain lawyers had a speciality of these sensitive files. Lawyers encourage even their customers in this procedure by advancing charges of moral harassing with an aim

of discrediting the sanctions decided by the company,
and of obtaining more important compensations.

However, the law provides that one or the other of the parts can require that the business be the subject of a Médiation, either before any procedure, or in the course of procedure. The judge himself can order (to recommend, since a refusal can be opposite by the parts or only one of them) the mediation.

The parts often come from there to negotiate a transaction rather than to begin in a legal procedure.

With final, in 2003, only half of the 200.000 businesses made available of the courts of arbitration were judged. When moral harassing was shown, the employees obtained on average the six months equivalent of wages in damages, by judgment or transaction. However the judges remained rather careful in general on these businesses and showed a restrictive appreciation of this phenomenon, drawing aside from the start this qualification when the advanced facts precise were not or not repeated. The plaintiff must materialize persecution by testimonys, like an expertise on the company doctor or mails of the harcelor… and, with the assessment the judgments remained very few, on average 1 out of 1.600 files, in 2003. During the jurisdictional year 2006, the Courts of arbitration treated 250.000 litigations. In 2006 of the judgments were marked in a quarter of the businesses . Currently, the publications of speciality estimate that 2 million employees is victims of moral harassing.

Finally, the judges validated the idea that a bad environment with work or a disagreement with its employer does not constitute in oneself moral harassing, with the great relief of the companies which had fears, after the vote of the law on moral harassing, which the professional pressure does not become a reason for appeal to justice.

However according to Tiennot Grumbach, specialist in the social right, which estimates that any suffering with work is not necessarily harassing: “ There exists a confusion between the moral harassing, which is the work of an individual, (...) often practiced without the knowledge of the employer, in a secret way, in a really destroying personal relation (...) and the professional harassing which exists in certain companies. (...) The first is a reprehensible fault with the civilian and/or the penal one. The second changing of a bad business management. Both can produce the same suffering at the employees (...) but they impose different answers. (.) the transfer of responsibility towards the employees and the executives, remuneration by premium, the stress, involve heavy pathologies. It is a social phenomenon, related to the increased pressure which weighs on the companies in a more competitive world. (...) There exists sometimes a disciplinary management of employment. Some Licenciement S are prepared (...) the sanctions fit then in a managerial process of decision. (...) In other cases, it is obvious that the employees dispute more and more the authority in the company, perceived like an illegitimate suffering. ”

In Belgium

The June 11th 2002 the Belgian Parliament votes a law for protection against violence, moral or sexual harassing with work. This law reinforces the legal instruments of fight and the preventive measures. It inserts in the law on the wellbeing of the provisions on the forms of violence into work. These provisions pursue a preventive goal and an objective of protection.

The victim of harassing enjoys two major protections:

a protection against the dismissal, in order to allow him to bring an legal action, to dare to make a statement on its situation by the means of a justified complaint or its testimony without fearing professional reprisals
an inversion of the burden of proof: the victim will have to establish in front of the trier of fact which makes it possible to suppose the existence of violence, of moral or sexual harassing. And it is then with the author of acts of violence or harassing which it falls to prove that there was not of it.

Criticisms of the concept of moral harassing in professional environment

Following its mediatization, the concept of moral harassing met various critics.

Some, like the sociologist Jean-Pierre Goff or certain trade-union activists, reproach the concept of moral harassing of “psychologiser” of the vaster phenomena of managerial ill-treatment or the stress generated by the intensification of work. Thus to speak about harassing and to concentrate on the relation between a victim and a pervert would be a manner of neglecting the context of appearance of harassing and the processes economic and organisational subjacent.

Another criticism, resulting from the medium of the human stock management, more specifically relates to the political measures intended to fight against moral harassing. Several professionals express thus in a file devoted to the subject by the review social Liaisons of the pressure that the possibility of the charge of moral harassing makes weigh on their shoulders. The law would be involved in the business management and would prevent any reaction vis-a-vis the inefficient employees while failing to protect the true victims.

Family harassing

The " parental harassing " , as for him, psychologically for the child (victim is all the more destroying) because the reference marks whom it has to build are his/her parents.

Additional details

Sources: (1) Initial article written starting from a study of the department of Organization and human resources, School of the management sciences, University from Quebec in Montreal.

Random links: