Mobbing in the public finance sector

Abstract

Specific labor law encompasses staff regulations in the public sphere, understood as the public sector of employment (at the national and local level), which includes entities of the public finance sector enumerated in art. 9 of the Act on Public Finance. The employers acting in this sphere have a different administrative status as well as certain administrative freedom in relation to the authorities that form them. The public sector, thanks to a highly developed bureaucratic apparatus as well as a strictly hierarchical structure in the ranks, constitutes a highly fertile ground for mobbing, which negatively affects not only the people who work there but also their families, clients and the whole society. In the public sector, the rules of creating particular administrative entities which serve as employers, their transformations and liquidations, as well as the filling of managerial positions are much more rigid. People who engage in authoritarian mobbing fare very well in the public sector, where issues such as promotions, pay rises, bonuses and prestigious tasks are entirely subjective and ultimately in their immediate superior’s purview. Nonetheless, according to art. 943 § 2 E. C., such harassment or intimidation must be persistent and particularly disruptive to be classified as mobbing.