(Mavrovo, 27-28.09.2013)
From 27-28 September 2013 in Hotel Srna – Mavrovo, Trade union of public and state administration of Macedonia with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, office in Skopje, organized a seminar on strengthening the capacities of trade union representatives in order to adequately prepare them for the practical implementation of Law on protection from harassment in the workplace, or popularly called ,,mobbing,,.
Lecturer of the seminar was Dr. Lazar Jovevski, professor at the Faculty of Law,, Justinijan I,, in Skopje, who in a very informal and interesting way bring forward legislation to participants of the seminar and properly prepare them for their role they are going to have in their working environments in order to prevent the appearance of doing mental or sexual harassment in the workplace for trade union members.
“Mobbing, said Dr. Jovevski, should be considered in light of protecting the health and safety of employees as part of the overall care of his personality. The reasons for mobbing are associated with conflict at work and generally appear as a consequence of disturbed interpersonal relationships between employees or between an employee and employer. The person doing the mobbing is usually superior which systematically and longer period frightens the other person in order to challenge his professional reputation and moral integrity, professional and human dignity in order to create intolerable conditions for work, so the victim of mobbing is in almost helpless position. The reasons for this behavior are often subjective inefficiencies of the mobber (egoism, hatred, fear, desire for progress at any cost, a sense of endangerment of work etc.). Many times lack of acknowledgment of mobbing and lack of safeguards causes huge damage in operation due to reduced productivity, costs associated with the use of sick leave by the victim, etc.”.
Because mobbing is a specific phenomenon that often interfere with any other emergent situations in the workplace, such as for example the stress caused by the work with parties, short deadlines, etc., and in order to be on time recognized the cases of harassment in their working environments and to respond in order to prevent these conditions, participants were included in the workshop divided into three groups and were given a task to specify one case, one example of psychological pressure on the employee in his organization and analyzed in terms of consequences which this situation had a person under a mobbing. Unfortunately one of these examples is a true story which had dire consequences, ie as a result of horizontal and vertical mobbing who had endured the person in one of our state institution, the outcome was disastrous that ended with serious consequences to their health and at the end with death.
Then it was analyzed the question of the role of the victim of mobbing or whether the victim itself in some aspects contribute to it being,,in the role,, of victim and whether there is a subjective parameter that affects it. It is interesting that in psychological research it has come to the conclusion that the passivity of the environment (not the victim) and the witness of mobbing play a key role in the development of mobbing and suffering of the victim.
It is good that a few months ago it is brought a special law for protection from harassment in the workplace, so that trade union representatives will not be just mute witness to what happens in the workplace, but can on time alert the employer and require such cases to be prevented. The law gives the potential victims of mobbing the ability to also initiate proceedings for protection from harassment in the workplace with their employer or seek this to do the trade union representative, and at the end always as an optional stands the ability to initiate a dispute if it cann’t be resolved in a prior proceeding with the employer.
At the end of the seminar, all participants received a copy of the law for protection against harassment in the workplace and a copy of the study on this subject written by Dr. Lazar Jovevski, and expressed the hope that the cooperation will continue between SADU and Friedrich Ebert Foundation, especially cooperation with Dr. Jovevski on these and similar topics primarily about labor law because on very efficient and interesting way to understand this difficult topic, were transferred to participants.
