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Pedro Antunes, CCA ONTIER's Labor Coordinator, spoke to Share Magazine about sexual harassment at work and the new law that reinforces its legal framework in Portugal.
'The numbers in Portugal do not clearly reflect the reality, i believe they are much higher. You still live in a climate of fear and searching for the right opportunity to speak, which unfortunately, in some cases, only happens years later. The workers do not file complaints in the first place because they consider the possible lack of proof - often these acts happen in isolation, so the victims think 'it is my word against the other party' - and secondly because the workers know that a denunciation may amount to rupture, and if they can not prove it, they fear they will lose their jobs, 'says Pedro Antunes.
The new law, in effect since October, began to punish situations of moral and sexual harassment with greater severity, creating an environment of public exposure that can undermine the reputation of the company. However, Pedro Antunes argues that 'the law could have been stricter, going beyond the requirement to create a simple code of conduct by imposing certain rules which its code had to observe in particular in cases of medium or large companies , and there should be a regulation regarding the channels for denouncing this kind of behavior '.
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