Struggling Against Violence and Harassment in the Workplace: A Legal Narrative of the BRICS Countries’ Experience

Abstract

The adoption by the International Labour Organization (ILO) of a special convention dedicated to the struggle against violence and harassment in the workplace, namely the Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (C190), is a special opportunity to research the level of protection against these phenomena granted by national legislations and to better understand the ways to improve it. The main objective of this article is to analyze the national approaches of the BRICS countries to the issue of harassment in the world of work in order to identify the current problems and the possible ways of solving them, including through the implementation of the norms of the C190 or following Violence and Harassment Recommendation, 2019 (No. 206) (R206). In the five sections of this article, each of which is dedicated to a separate member state of BRICS, the authors examine the national labor legislation and other laws that are relevant to the topic, the gaps in these norms as compared to the requirements of the C190, and the case law in this field. The research demonstrates that certain BRICS nations, such as South Africa, have implemented a legal framework to address and prevent harassment, having ratified C190. In Brazil, violence and harassment in the workplace are not regulated by a special law; instead, the country’s norms are rather fragmented and tend to protect mostly women, in particular against sexual harassment. On the other hand, countries such as China and India, despite their focus on prohibiting sexual harassment against women, often overlook the aspect of moral harassment. Russia tends to neglect both issues, altogether disregarding the inclusion of specific norms in the labor law.