In 2025, the Authority for Working Conditions (ACT) received 3,481 requests for inspection intervention due to harassment that led to 20 administrative offenses, according to provisional data provided to Lusa. In a written response, ACT indicated that the numbers for 2025 identify 3,422 requests for intervention for moral harassment and 59 for sexual harassment.
According to ACT, the number of requests for intervention for workplace harassment may be “substantially lower” than what is actually encountered. That’s because “the majority of reports of workplace harassment do not lead to the opening of an inspection process”.
A ACT highlights that it is necessary to distinguish harassment from “other similar figures”such as the “legitimate exercise of hierarchical and disciplinary power, stress, burnout, labor conflict, poor working conditions, abuse of management power or lack of effective employment”. That entity emphasizes that “only after the tax intervention and the process is completed can the practice of workplace harassment be confirmed”.
ACT recalls that, in accordance with article 29 of the Labor Code, “harassment is understood as unwanted behavior, namely that based on a factor of discrimination, practiced when accessing employment or in the employment itself, work or professional training, with the purpose or effect of disturbing or embarrassing a person, affecting their dignity, or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or destabilizing environment”.
It already is Sexual harassment “is unwanted behavior of a sexual nature, in verbal, non-verbal, or physical form”, with the same objective. The Commission for Equality in Labor and Employment (CITE) has some intervention in cases of workplace harassment, but only in “situations that originate discrimination based on sex, discrimination regarding parental rights or violation of the rights to reconcile professional, personal and family life”.
If it receives a complaint regarding sexual or moral harassment in a workplace context without these assumptions, the entity cannot intervene, the president, Carla Tavares, explained to Lusa. THE CITE accepts complaints, but, as it does not have an inspection nature, “the complaint can only be processed if the complainant authorizes the contradiction”.
“When people become aware of this, they usually don’t want to continue”, observes Carla Tavares. “This silence caused by fear prevents action on this type of behavior, crystallizing a practice that must be punished, as this is the only way to put an end to the aggressor’s feeling of impunity”recognizes the president of CITE.
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