Harassment at work: MP servers report abuse – 03/25/2023 – Market

In April, it completes one year and six months since public prosecutors at federal and state levels claim the creation of a mental health program with the CNMP (National Council of the Public Ministry).

The proposal was filed with the council in 2021 along with the presentation of a survey commissioned by the Health Commission of the institution itself, which sought to analyze psychosocial risks in the Brazilian Public Ministry. Responses related to psychological violence and harassment in the work environment were surprising, as they indicated recurrent hostility on the part of hierarchical superiors.

Deputy attorneys, attorneys and their advisors, both commissioned and in effective positions, were cited.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office, in the different spheres, has among its functions to look after social and individual interests. The institution’s council is composed, for the most part, of attorneys, in addition to lawyers and representatives of the judiciary and Congress.

“We had been noticing the illness of colleagues, both due to the overload of tasks and because of harassment in the work environment, but everyone is afraid to speak up because of the risk of retaliation, and we were limited”, says Erica Oliveira, who works at Fenamp (National Federation of State Public Prosecutors).

“The survey brought statistics to demonstrate the urgency in relation to the issue and gave us the data so that it could make claims”, he continues.

Entitled “Attention to the Mental Health of Public Ministry Members and Servers: psychosocial factors at work in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic”, the survey was completed in October 2021, when most were working from home. For the researchers, it measures the work environment as a whole, and the responses may have been more frank because of the physical distance from the public office.

The survey, carried out by Ufrgs (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul) and its foundation, Faurrgs, heard 4,077 members of the Public Ministry in 26 states and the Federal District, including members and effective servants and in commission positions.

In the study, 77.2% of respondents claimed to have suffered some type of emotional embarrassment, with 50.1% declaring themselves victims of moral harassment and another 27.1% saying they were the target of psychological violence.

Of the total number of participants, 6.7% said they had already thought about ending their own lives.

Of the total, 85% had an increased risk of psychological illness. When asked if they had started any mental health treatment after joining the institution, 42.4% answered yes, with 16.5% claiming to have resorted to a psychologist, 6%, a psychiatrist, and 19.9%, a both.

The study concluded that problems were ignored. The perception prevailed among public servants that the best alternative to maintain a good work environment was to remain silent. Sadness, revolt, impotence, fear and frustration are some of the feelings listed by those who have been the target or witness of psychological aggression.

The survey transcribes anonymous statements of harassment, both moral and sexual (read some excerpts below). The report also heard civil servants who denounced hostilities on the condition that their names were not disclosed.

There were reports of harassment, such as the boss constantly telling a server the advantages of going out with him. Humiliation, such as being forced to pick up paper on the floor or being scolded in front of colleagues for not responding quickly to a demand.

The harasser punishes when he is denounced. It usually sues the author of the complaint, both in the administrative sphere and in the courts, including criminally. Even if he loses all the lawsuits, the person accused of harassment continues to file lawsuits, making the professional life of the person who made the complaint unfeasible.

RIGID HIERARCHY MAKES ROOM FOR HARASSMENT

According to psychologist Silvia Generali da Costa, who participated in the survey, harassment complaints have grown in public institutions with more rigid structures.

“The most worrying thing about the results of the Public Prosecutor’s Office are the rates of illness, suicidal ideation and the degree of mental exhaustion of the research participants”, she says.

“However, I have been researching public institutions, such as the Judiciary and bodies that work with the socialization of young people and adults, and the problem of moral harassment has been recurrent.”

According to Costa, who is also an ombudsman at the Union of Public Prosecution Service Employees in Rio Grande do Sul, the structure of the Brazilian public sector is organized in a hierarchical, centralized manner, with communication problems and employee appreciation. In recent years, the environment has become more tense.

Public departments were encouraged to import metrics from the private sector, demanding goals and results, without, however, offering the counterpart of infrastructure reinforcement that private companies have, pressuring managers to increase the demand on public servants. This pressure, explains the psychologist, often manifests itself in the form of harassment.

“So, moral harassment is not the act of one or two psychopaths who, due to some oversight in the selection process, entered the public sector. That’s not it,” she says.

“Harassment is institutional, almost a work tool. This gets worse in institutions like the Public Ministry, whose structure is a pyramid, with a small group in charge, which has differences in status, power and rewards. There is also a lack of management training . A promoter takes part in a competition to work with the law, not to manage people.”

The psychologist emphasizes that evidence of vulnerability leaves no doubt that the MP needs to implement mechanisms to improve personnel management and also to monitor and remedy the psychological effects pointed out in the research.

“It is necessary to reassess issues such as training managers, number of servers and modernization of IT infrastructure, for example, which can improve work processes”, he says.

“But we also need a mental health and support policy in case of violence, with a channel, a committee, a space where the server can make a complaint, and that it is investigated in an impartial way, by the aspect of the working group , because one of the biggest problems with combating harassment is that it is individualized.”

After the rite of contributions and spending some time on the rapporteur’s table throughout 2022, the proposal for the creation of the mental health program returned, at the beginning of March of this year, to the Health Commission so that adjustments could be made from of the suggestions presented in the draft. No plenary vote is scheduled.

The defense of the mental health program was the target, last year, of a joint campaign between state entities and the Public Ministry of the Union, which encompasses the organism at the federal level. On Tuesday (28) there will be a new mobilization in an attempt to speed up the procedures.

OTHER SIDE

In a note to the report, the CNMP press office recalled that the survey was carried out on its own initiative and said that it will be analyzed in all its aspects to support the construction of a unified mental health policy.

The Council stated that it intends, based on the results of the research, to propose a unified mental health policy, considering that each unit or branch of the Public Ministry develops its own policies in this area.

Within the movement to install this policy, the CNMP highlighted some initiatives. He reinforced that, still in 2021, he published the “Report on Psychosocial Risks in the Brazilian Public Ministry”, with the main information about the survey, and also promoted the program “Interinstitutional Dialogues in Health”, to discuss the results of the research.

In March 2023, the Council held an event on the post-pandemic challenges of Covid-19 for mental health, with a lecture by psychiatrist Augusto Cury.

TESTIMONIALS TRANSCRIBED IN THE SURVEY

“As I was a harasser who harassed everyone in the workplace, I was bothered thinking about when it would be my turn again.”

“I was very worried about the chance of falling into a more difficult situation, especially with the news of sexual harassment. I submitted myself to a greater workload for fear of stopping in a place with sexual harassment.”

“The last time my boss started yelling at me in front of interns, I couldn’t even look my kids in the eye…”

“It makes me angry when friends and colleagues are wronged, but our institution doesn’t allow us much freedom and support to question.”

“It only increased my shame of working at the institution that claims to be the defender of society, but which constantly submits outsourced and commissioned workers to situations of abuse and disrespect for rights.”

“I was very shaken, because it happened to me, it affected my private and family life, sometimes I cried and was very sad, to the point that friends and family, at the time of the incident, always asked if everything was okay with me, when I arrived at work already I kept imagining what would happen. Despite always receiving threats, thank God these people left my sector, because in addition to causing me suffering, they made the work environment heavy.”