One in five people in the world, more than 743 million workers, suffers or suffered some type of workplace violence. Women are much more likely than men to face harassment and sexual harassment, and migrant women almost twice as likely as non-migrants.
Psychological violence is the most frequent in all the countries analyzed, according to a survey released by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and carried out by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation.
The ILO understands, in its Convention 190, that workplace harassment is a set of practices or threats “that will have as its object, that cause or are likely to cause, physical, psychological, sexual or economic harm, and includes violence for reasons of genre”. The regulation, which is the only one in the world that regulates these issues, was ratified by Argentina.
The country does not escape this reality. According to the latest report from the Office of Counseling on Workplace Violence (OAVL), 65% of consultations for abuse are made by women and 32% by men. The vast majority had to do with psychological violence (88%), and to a lesser extent, but no less relevant, with contexts of sexual violence (8%) and physical violence (4%).
From his experience as a lawyer, Ricardo Ruiz Moreno comments to PROFILE that “most of the men who talk about headline violence work in the construction field. The strange thing is that it is internalized, accepted”. On the other hand, with respect to women, he said that many cases are given to workers in private homes, where “mistreatment, or assigning them tasks for which they were not hired” are frequent. The labor lawyer Sebastián Marengo, for his part, adds that “there is a greater amount of violence from men towards women” and that “in most cases it occurs due to abuse of power.”
In situations of more precarious employment and given the need for people to keep their jobs, conditions can worsen. Haydée Valdez is 57 years old, she is a migrant, she arrived from Peru to Argentina in 1996, and since then she has carried out different paid care tasks. Her experiences changed, according to her comments, as she adapted to the country and tried not to accept a job in which she was mistreated. “There are people who are good and people who are bad, who discriminate against you, humiliate you. It was very ugly to have experiences like that. Some yelled at you or told you ‘you don’t know how to do anything, this is wrong,’” she told PROFILE.
The ILO specified situations that constitute workplace harassment and violence in several of its previous resolutions and reports, in which it considers that mistreatment often has the objective of “undermining the self-esteem and dignity of the harassed person.” Among the most common behaviors, they identified those of “assigning work without any value or utility, evaluating their work in an inequitable way, devaluing their effort, amplifying errors, ignoring or leaving a vacuum.” On the other hand, the organization maintains, the purpose is for the harassed person to leave their job.
“No matter what she did, she was never satisfied. I got out of that job, but she didn’t want to pay me. She told me: ‘okay, I’m going to pay you, but first show me your things’. She thought I was stealing from her. I had good and bad experiences, but today she did not let anyone yell at me, ”says Valdez.
In the case of women, furthermore, harassment can be used in situations in which they are protected against dismissal. That of pregnant women is an example when “they are prevented from stabilizing in their usual position,” says the ILO.
In Argentina, Law 26,485 of comprehensive protection to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women, defines labor abuse as that which “obstructs their access to employment, hiring, promotion, stability or permanence, demanding requirements on marital status, maternity , age, physical appearance or taking a pregnancy test”. Violence is also considered “breaking the right to equal pay for equal work.”
In addition to the resignation of the worker, workplace violence can have other consequences, according to the conclusions presented in its report by the OAVL. Of those who report these cases, eight out of ten suffered “anguish, depression, low self-esteem, panic attacks, nightmares, forgetfulness or disorientation”; and four out of ten had physical consequences such as “gastritis, contractures and dizziness”.
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