Workplace Mobbing: What It Is, How It Arises, and How to Prove It

Mobbing is systematic, deliberate hostility meant to degrade, isolate, or push a worker out. It is not an isolated clash or ordinary criticism: it takes shape through repetition, a power imbalance, and harm to your dignity or psychological and physical health. It is proven through indicia, not a confession, and Argentine employers have an affirmative duty to prevent it.

1. What counts as mobbing under Argentine law

The word "mobbing" appears in no Argentine statute, but the conduct it describes is squarely covered by existing rules. The starting point is the employer's duty of safety under Art. 75 LCT: the employer must take the measures needed to protect employees' psychological and physical integrity and dignity, regardless of whether the mistreatment comes from the employer itself, a mid-level manager, or a coworker. Add to that Art. 17 LCT, which bans discrimination based on sex, race, nationality, religion, political views, union activity, or age, and ILO Convention 190 on the elimination of violence and harassment in the world of work, approved by Argentina through Law 27,580.

Those rules give rise to the three elements that courts and legal scholars require for a situation to qualify as mobbing rather than an ordinary workplace conflict:

• Systematic conduct: not a one-off incident, but behavior that repeats over time with some frequency.
• Power imbalance or hostile intent: a hierarchical, numerical, or influence-based advantage is used to subdue the victim.
• Harm or degrading purpose: the intended or actual effect is to damage your dignity, your psychological or physical health, or to force you out.

Mobbing should also not be confused with sexual harassment at work: both violate your dignity on the job, but sexual harassment has its own legal and evidentiary framework, with nuances that go beyond this guide.

2. Forms of workplace harassment

Mobbing is usually classified by the hierarchical position of the harasser relative to the victim. Recognizing the form helps identify who should be held accountable and what evidence to gather:

• Downward (vertical) mobbing: exercised by a superior over a subordinate. It is the most common form and the easiest to link directly to the employer's breach of its duty of safety.
• Horizontal mobbing: occurs between coworkers at the same level. The employer is still liable if it was informed and failed to make the conduct stop.
• Upward mobbing: one or more subordinates harass the person supervising them, often to force them out or undermine their authority. It is less common, but is proven and claimed under the same logic.

Beyond this hierarchy-based classification, harassment typically takes the following shapes:

• Isolation and stripping of duties: taking away your tasks, excluding you from team meetings, or denying you the tools you need to do your job.
• Public humiliation and verbal abuse: shouting, insults, or repeated unjustified threats of discipline or dismissal.
• Excessive workload or impossible deadlines: arbitrary targets designed to provoke error, exhaustion, or resignation.
• Discriminatory harassment: persecution based on union activity, age, gender, health status, or marital status, in direct violation of Art. 17 LCT.

3. How to prove mobbing, and what the employer must prevent

Unlike an ordinary dismissal claim, where proving the employment relationship is enough, mobbing requires you to show a pattern of conduct. No one is going to confess to harassing you: the evidence is built from indicia that, taken together, support your account.

What evidence to gather to prove the harassment occurred

• Your own chronological record: date, specific fact, and who was present at each incident. It is the foundation that witness testimony later builds on.
• Written communications: emails, WhatsApp messages, or internal notes documenting the mistreatment, the excessive demands, or the stripping of your duties.
• Witnesses: coworkers who saw the events or whom you told about them at the time. See how witness testimony works in a labor trial.
• Medical or psychological records and leave certificates: these support that harm occurred and when it began, though here they play a different role than when quantifying moral damages: they serve as an indicator that the conduct had a real effect on you.

For a more operational, step-by-step guide to building this evidence, see how to prove workplace harassment and mobbing. In stronger cases, alongside a psychological evaluation, specific expert evidence on the work environment often comes into play.

The employer's duty to prevent harassment

Art. 75 LCT does not merely bar the employer from harassing you: it imposes an affirmative duty to prevent harassment from happening at all, no matter who is behind it. ILO Convention 190 (Law 27,580) reinforces that same logic by placing on the employer the responsibility to adopt a policy for preventing violence and harassment at work.

In practice, this has two consequences that work in your favor:

• If the harassment comes from a coworker rather than a boss, the employer is still liable if it was informed of the situation and failed to act to stop it.
• The absence of an internal reporting channel, or the company's failure to respond to a formal complaint, aggravates the breach of the duty of safety and strengthens your claim.

4. Step by step if you are being harassed

1. Start keeping a record now. Dates, specific facts, witnesses present. Once the relationship becomes strained, gathering this information gets much harder.
2. If the company has an internal reporting channel, use it. It is not a legal requirement before sending a formal notice, but it documents that the company was made aware of the situation.
3. Keep gathering evidence in parallel: communications, witnesses, and, where relevant, medical or psychological care.
4. Send a free labor telegram (Law 23,789), describing specific facts — not vague complaints — and demanding an end to the harassment under warning that you will consider yourself constructively dismissed. See how to send a free labor telegram.
5. If the employer does not respond or the conduct continues, notify a constructive dismissal based on the breach under Arts. 242 and 246 LCT. See when constructive dismissal is legally justified.
6. Start the mandatory pre-trial SECLO proceeding (Law 24,635) before filing suit. See how mandatory conciliation works.
7. To calculate what you are owed — the tarifada severance plus moral damages, which are cumulative — continue with the guide to severance and damages for workplace mobbing.

5. Mistakes that weaken a mobbing claim

• Confusing an isolated clash with mobbing. A claim lacking real systematic conduct and power imbalance falls apart easily, whether in front of the company or in court. Before sending a formal notice, assess whether your situation meets all three elements: repetition, imbalance, and harm or degrading purpose.
• Resigning instead of giving formal notice and, if warranted, considering yourself constructively dismissed. A resignation ends the contract without employer fault and costs you the right to the tarifada severance.
• Sending a vague notice. "They treat me badly" is not enough. The notice has to describe specific, dated facts so the breach can later be proven.
• Not keeping a written record of an internal complaint. If you filed a verbal complaint, ask that it be documented in writing, or send an email summarizing what was discussed.
• Letting too much time pass between the last incident and the formal notice. A long silence can be read as meaning the situation was not that serious.
• Not distinguishing sexual harassment from generic mobbing. If your case involves conduct of a sexual nature, it is worth framing it specifically: see the guide on sexual harassment at work.

Frequently Asked Questions