Harassment

Harassment is an abuse of power at the workplace, at the VET school, in associations or elsewhere. At the workplace, harassment can occur between managers and their staff and can also affect apprentices. Typical acts of harassment include spreading false rumours, humiliating statements, giving excessive or demeaning orders, continually denigrating the work done, excluding people from a group, making threatening remarks.

With harassment, it is often not clear who the parties are, and there is a lack of common objectives in the dispute, such as a decision on a factual issue. For unpleasant behaviour to be classified as harassment, they must take place over a certain period of time.

The employer is required to protect his employees from harassment. If there are indications of harassment, the cantonal VET offices are the first point of contact for initial information. They can provide advice and contact details of specialised bodies