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Psychological violence can be invisible and be present on family, social, educational and professional environments. Recent studies indicate that it is psychological violence and harassment, rather than physical violence, which represents the greatest threat to most workers.
Methods
Aim: This study aimed to investigate the reported experiences of young apprentices and trainees about moral harassment at work.
Methods: Thirty semistructured individual interviews with a script of fifteen questions were conducted with adolescent workers aged 14 to 20 years old, students of a Program for Professional Learning of a non-government institution of São Paulo, Brazil. Eleven young women and nineteen young men participated in the study. The average working time of these participants was twelve months. The data were evaluated using hermeneutic-dialectic analyses.
Results
Situations of workplace violence were reported by the participants, such as being exposed to humiliation, abuse of power, constraints and sexual harassment at work. Their reports showed the young workers could do little to defend themselves, because those attacks came from both coworkers and superiors. Among coworkers, the most frequent situations were wicked jokes, and by the chiefs, were abuse of power. Since this workplace violence cannot be defined as work harassment, as they were generally punctual, but have generated discomfort at work.
Discussion
The young workers have reported little or no knowledge of possible strategies for coping with moral harassment at work, showing vulnerability to the effects of aggression. Still, there isn’t a specific legislation in Brazil about this issue. In spite of the lack of legislation on the subject it is important to raise awareness about the problem, and implement effective actions to prevent psychological workplace violence. This would help young people to know about their rights and provide effective ways to deal with such situations.