Workplace Mobbing Severance & Moral Damages

Mobbing entitles you to two separate, stackable claims: statutory severance under Article 245 LCT for the constructive dismissal, and a standalone claim for moral and psychological damages (Art. 1738 CCyC) with no legal cap. You claim them by sending a formal notice, then a constructive dismissal, then collecting through SECLO conciliation or a court judgment.

1. What Compensation Applies for Workplace Mobbing?

Mobbing does not produce a single payout. When the harassment is serious enough to justify leaving the job, the law entitles you to claim two claims of a different legal nature that stack on top of each other: statutory severance for the constructive dismissal, and a civil claim for moral damages. They are compatible because each one compensates something different, and claiming one does not mean giving up the other.

Other items can be added to these two core claims depending on the case: notice pay and the month-end integration (Arts. 232 and 233 LCT), plus wages for non-work-related illness leave (Art. 208 LCT) if the harassment forced you to take medical leave for certified stress, anxiety, or depression. That leave, beyond being paid, also serves as evidence that the harm existed and when it began.

2. How to Prove Mobbing and How Moral Damages Are Quantified

Article 245 LCT is calculated with a formula. Moral damages are not. That's why, in a mobbing claim, evidence does more than prove the harassment happened: it is what ultimately sets how much your claim is worth.

What evidence to gather

• Witnesses: coworkers who saw what happened, or who you told about it at the time. See how witness testimony works in a labor trial.
• Written communications: emails, WhatsApp messages, or internal notes documenting the mistreatment, unreasonable demands, or being stripped of your duties.
• Psychological records and reports: the treatment you underwent during or after the harassment. In court, this becomes an expert psychological evaluation that determines whether there is incapacity and its link to the work environment.
• Related medical leave: non-work-related illness certificates that mention the work-related cause of the condition.
• Your own timeline: dates, specific incidents, and who was present. The more precise it is, the easier it is to back up later with witnesses.

For a deeper look at this part, there's a dedicated guide on how to prove workplace mobbing step by step. You don't need a confession from the employer: a coherent set of indicators — emails, witnesses, medical records — is usually enough to establish that the harassment occurred.

What the judge weighs to put a number on moral damages

Unlike Article 245, there is no table here. The amount comes from weighing, together:

• The severity and duration of the hostile conduct (an isolated incident is not the same as a year of systematic harassment).
• The concrete after-effects: whether there was treatment, medical leave, medication, or a psychological impairment measurable through expert evidence.
• The harasser's position (a direct supervisor makes the case more serious than a peer, because it implicates the employer's duty of safety under Art. 75 LCT).
• The impact on your life beyond work: whether it made it harder to find new employment, or affected your health long-term.

You can read more on this in the guide on how moral and psychological damages are compensated in a labor trial. In practice, a claim backed by expert psychological evidence and solid documentation is valued very differently from one that relies only on the victim's own account.

3. Step by Step: How to Claim Mobbing Severance and Moral Damages

1. Gather evidence before you act. Save emails and screenshots, write down dates and specific incidents, identify witnesses. Once the relationship breaks down, getting this becomes much harder.
2. Continue or start psychological treatment and keep every certificate. This isn't just about your health — it's the evidence that will later support the moral damages claim.
3. Send a formal notice through a free labor telegram (Law 23,789), describing the specific acts of harassment — not in vague terms — and demanding they stop, under warning that you will consider yourself constructively dismissed. See how to send a free labor telegram.
4. If the employer doesn't respond or the conduct doesn't stop, notify the constructive dismissal based on the just cause set out in Arts. 242 and 246 LCT. Review when constructive dismissal is legally justified.
5. Start the mandatory pre-trial proceeding at SECLO (Law 24,635) before filing suit, except in the statutory exceptions. See how mandatory SECLO conciliation works.
6. If there's no settlement, file suit claiming both items: the statutory severance under Art. 245 LCT and the quantified moral damages, offering all the evidence you gathered — witnesses, expert psychological evaluation, documentation — from the complaint itself.

4. Mistakes That Cost You the Moral Damages Award

• Resigning instead of filing a constructive dismissal. A resignation ends the contract without the employer being at fault: you lose Article 245 LCT severance and weaken the moral damages claim, because it looks like a voluntary exit rather than a forced one.
• Sending the notice before gathering evidence. The moment the employer receives the notice, the relationship gets tense, and it becomes harder to get witnesses or screenshots that were easy to obtain before.
• Writing a vague notice. "I'm being treated badly" isn't enough. The notice has to describe specific incidents, with dates, so the just cause can later be proven.
• Letting too much time pass between the last incident and the notice. A long silence can be read as meaning the situation wasn't that serious, or as tacit acceptance.
• Claiming moral damages based only on your own account, without expert psychological evidence or medical records. The judge may set a low amount or reject the claim outright for lack of concrete proof of harm.
• Treating sexual harassment as generic mobbing. It shares the logic of stacking statutory severance and moral damages, but has its own legal framework (ILO Convention 190) and different evidentiary nuances: if that's your case, see the guide on sexual harassment at work.

Frequently Asked Questions