The largest public institution in Spain dedicated to scientific and technical research -in which a total of 121 research centers and more than 13,000 workers are grouped throughout the country- affirms that it has only received eight complaints for workplace harassment and one more for sexual harassment in the last five years. This is the brief balance provided by the general secretariat of the Superior Council of Scientific Investigations (CSIC) at the request of EL PERIÓDICO on the cases of harassment and discrimination detected in all of its research centers. In total, according to the institution, there arel least three professionals sanctioned for these reasons. “These figures are not credible. In the academic world there are many more cases of harassment that are not coming to light“, Explain Sandra Gonzalez, President of the Spanish Office for Research Integrity, one of the main platforms against bullying in academies.
A climate survey detected at least 628 cases of sexual harassment between mild, moderate and serious more in the institution
On paper, this institution has a protocol against workplace bullying and with another against sexual harassment and gender discrimination. In both cases, there are several mechanisms enabled both to prevent and to report this type of situation. But in practice, according to several professionals linked to the CSIC in statements to EL PERIÓDICO, “protocols fall short“. “They are designed to discourage complaints,” explains Mario (fictitious name), a former CSIC investigator who suffered a situation of continuous abuse of power in his workplace and who, according to him, after reporting his case was totally helpless by the institution.
“The protocols are designed to discourage complaints”
Alejandro Pedregal, victim of harassment at the CSIC
One of the main stumbling blocks denounced in unison by several affected by harassment at the CSIC is precisely the “ineffectiveness” of the current protocols. In fact, the same protocol against workplace bullying describes a series of behaviors that, “although they could constitute infringements”, cannot be strictly considered as harassment and therefore cannot be prosecuted with the same forcefulness. These include, for example, “despotic conduct directed indiscriminately“, “the specific and successive offenses directed by several subjects without coordination between them”, “the pressures to increase the working day or carry out certain jobs” and “the substantial modifications of working conditions causeless [justificada] and without following the legally established procedure”, among others. “The sum of these situations represents a case of manual harassment. To deny it is to deny reality,” says Alvaro Peraltaalso a member of the Spanish Office of Research Integrity.
hidden cases
The balance on cases of harassment provided by the CSIC is far from the reality that, according to the workers, is lived in the centers themselves. It also differs with respect to the figures that emerge from the studies carried out to understand the magnitude of this phenomenon. In 2019, the same institution tried to draw the first big x-ray on bullying in its centers. To do this, he surveyed a total of 6,284 professionals to explore, on the one hand, his perception of the “work environment” and, on the other, his experience with bullying issues. The main objective of the study, led by the Institute for Advanced Social Studies (IESA-CSIC), was to investigate situations of sexual harassment but, collaterally, they also ended up collecting data on different types of discrimination, mistreatment and violence in the Laboral scene.
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As the study finds, 9.6% of men and the 12.3% of women They think they live in a hostile work environment. The behaviors most repeated by people in this situation are, for example, those that “hinder the professional career (or promotion),” the assignment of tasks that are not appropriate to the workplace or the exclusion of formal or informal meetings. There is also 3.6% of professionals who directly acknowledges that they are “treated badly” habitually in their workplace and 20.3% who state that they suffer situations of mistreatment on an occasional basis. This would mean at least 226 cases of habitual mistreatment and about 1,275 that occur occasionally but, even so, they are not an isolated case.
The figures on sexual harassment collected in this study are also much higher than the only complaint received by CSIC. According to the survey itself, a 1.9% of the staff admit to having suffered a sexual harassment situation in your workplace. These figures imply at least 119 cases declared suffered in CSIC centers, of which 105 correspond to women and 14 to men. Beyond these, the survey also includes an even higher percentage of people who have suffered situations of sexual harassment, although ‘a priori’ they do not identify them as such. 10% of those surveyed affirm that they have suffered “jokes and pranks, compliments or comments of sexual content” as well as “excessive approaches and touching”. This supposes at least 628 cases of sexual harassment between mild, moderate and serious more in the institution.