Inside Portugal's Courts: Judicial Workers Expose Widespread Psychological Abuse and Retaliation

Courts across Portugal face an invisible crisis: the people who keep the system running are reporting sustained patterns of intimidation, overwork, and psychological abuse that their union says crosses into criminal territory.

The Sindicato dos Funcionários Judiciais (Judicial Workers Union, SFJ) revealed this week that it has been fielding complaints from staff across multiple tribunal buildings—allegations involving humiliation, professional isolation, relentless pressure to work beyond legal limits, and hierarchical coercion designed to silence resistance. These are not isolated incidents, the union emphasizes. They are systematic behaviors that may trigger disciplinary penalties, civil damages, and in serious cases, criminal prosecution.

The specifics matter. This is not about bruised egos or personality clashes. The union points to documented patterns of retaliation against employees who refuse unpaid overtime, hostile treatment in open office settings, and the weaponization of performance expectations to justify punitive measures.

Why This Matters

• Enforcement remains weak: Only 20 of 3,480 workplace harassment complaints the Autoridade para as Condições do Trabalho (ACT) received in 2024 resulted in sanctions—less than 1%, revealing a chronic implementation gap between law and practice.

• A dedicated reporting channel now exists: The SFJ has launched [email protected] as a formal avenue for disclosures, complete with evidentiary guidance to overcome the notorious difficulty of proving psychological abuse.

• Legal liability extends beyond individuals: Portugal law holds employers accountable for harassment, including exposure to criminal charges when sustained abuse causes clinically documented psychological injury.

The Pattern of Abuse Inside the Judicial System

What makes the SFJ's intervention significant is not the novelty of the complaint—workplace harassment in Portugal is widespread—but the venue. Court employees occupy a legally distinctive position. They operate within the General Law on Work in Public Functions (Lei Geral do Trabalho em Funções Públicas, LTFP), meaning their protections against harassment are technically robust but practically fragile.

The union's vocabulary is clinical and specific. It documents "repeated acts of humiliation, professional devaluation, psychological pressure, functional isolation, hierarchical constraint, and the creation of intimidating work environments." Each phrase maps onto recognized forms of psychological abuse, not managerial rudeness.

The overtime issue deserves particular attention. Portuguese labor law limits the working week to 40 hours for most public servants. Yet court staff report systematic pressure to exceed these limits, coupled with informal sanctions—delayed promotions, assignment to less desirable cases, public criticism during team meetings—for those who decline. "The expectation of performance does not authorize intimidatory practice. Hierarchy does not confer the right to humiliate. Staff shortages do not legitimize the demand for unlimited availability," the SFJ stated, stripping away bureaucratic language to expose the underlying logic: judges and court administrators have weaponized necessity (chronic understaffing) into justification for abuse.

How Portugal's Legal Framework Should Protect These Workers

The law, at least on paper, is protective. Under Portugal's labor code, moral harassment is defined as unwanted conduct that damages dignity and creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, or destabilizing environment. The threshold is not a single outburst but a pattern of repeated behavior—the precise condition the SFJ describes.

Consequences for the perpetrator can include:

• Dismissal of the aggressor, following disciplinary proceedings.

• Civil damages to compensate the victim for psychological harm, medical treatment, and lost career advancement.

• Criminal prosecution when sustained abuse causes clinically documented psychological harm, potentially qualifying as an occupational disease under Portugal's occupational health statute.

Additionally, Portugal law creates a powerful presumption: any dismissal or penalty applied to a worker within one year of filing a harassment complaint is presumed retaliatory unless the employer proves otherwise. This protective mechanism is theoretically a major deterrent but has not translated into widespread enforcement.

The Evidence Problem: Why Complaints Often Stall

One of the union's central concerns, articulated plainly in its statement, is the evidentiary burden that makes many legitimate complaints effectively unprosecutable. Harassment frequently occurs in private settings—closed office conversations, individual performance reviews, unofficial communications—where documentation and witnesses are scarce. A supervisor's comment uttered over a cup of coffee leaves no trace. A pattern of exclusion is felt but not recorded.

To address this practical reality, the SFJ issued a detailed protocol for affected staff:

• Maintain a systematic, chronological log: Record the date, time, location, and circumstances of each incident. Precision matters—"February 20, 3:15 PM, my supervisor's office" carries more weight than "last week."

• Document exact language: Write down what was said verbatim, without interpretation or emotional language. "My supervisor stated X" is stronger than "I felt criticized."

• Identify witnesses: Note who saw, heard, or may have knowledge of the behavior.

• Preserve written records: Save every relevant email, memo, text message, or message via work chat.

• Report promptly: Delay weakens credibility and suggests the victim did not view the conduct as serious at the time.

This guidance reflects hard experience. The Autoridade para as Condições do Trabalho data reveals the depth of the problem: between 2020 and 2023, the ACT opened only 55 infringement proceedings related to moral harassment across the entire private and public sectors. In 2024 alone, it received 3,480 complaints but issued sanctions in fewer than 20 cases. The ACT's inspector general, Fernanda Campos, has publicly described these figures as "absolutely insignificant" relative to the documented prevalence of harassment.

In the public sector broadly, the gap is even starker: since 2017, the civil service has logged 203 complaints of moral harassment, yet only two have resulted in disciplinary sanctions. The message is clear: making a complaint is not the same as obtaining redress.

What the Ministry of Justice Claims It Is Doing

The Ministério da Justiça and its Direção-Geral da Administração da Justiça (DGAJ) have not remained entirely passive. In recent years, responding partly to legislative mandates, they adopted a Code of Good Conduct for the Prevention and Combat of Harassment in the Workplace. This code establishes formal procedures:

• Confidential complaint mechanisms with explicit protections against retaliation, except where the complainant acts in bad faith.

• Expedited investigation timelines for harassment allegations.

• Mandatory disciplinary proceedings whenever harassment is alleged.

• Training and awareness initiatives for staff and magistrates.

• Psychosocial risk assessments to identify workplace conditions—excessive workload, ambiguous authority, cultures that tolerate intimidation—that cultivate harassment.

On paper, this is comprehensive. In practice, the union's decision to launch its own reporting channel suggests limited confidence in internal mechanisms. The reluctance to report internally may stem from several sources: fear that disclosing abuse by a superior will circulate through court hierarchies and damage future prospects, or skepticism that internal investigations—conducted by the same institution harboring the abuse—will reach fair conclusions.

The European Precedent: When Courts Failed to Protect Their Own

The Tribunal de Justiça da União Europeia (CJEU) has dealt with multiple cases of psychological harassment within European judicial and institutional settings. In T-275/17 (Curto) and T-377/17 (SQ / EIB), the Court condemned the European Parliament and the European Investment Bank for failing to act on harassment claims, awarding damages to affected workers and mandating disciplinary action. These cases established that institutional prestige or hierarchical seniority cannot override the duty to protect staff from sustained psychological abuse.

In another case, T-65/19 (AI/ECDC), the Court examined whether an institution could avoid initiating disciplinary proceedings simply because the accused perpetrator had already resigned. The ruling was clear: departure does not erase responsibility or eliminate the victim's right to a formal investigation and, if warranted, a formal finding of wrongdoing in the record.

French case law offers a parallel instruction: a manager's dismissal was upheld after his conduct caused documented mental health deterioration in a colleague, with courts ruling that the employer's duty to safeguard the psychological and physical health of workers superseded considerations of managerial experience or performance history.

In several European jurisdictions, criminal penalties for workplace harassment can reach imprisonment terms of up to three years in severe cases, with civil damages frequently exceeding tens of thousands of euros.

What Happens Now: The Burden on Victims

The timing of the SFJ's intervention—late February 2026—signals tactical positioning. The union may be marshaling evidence and public attention ahead of budget debates or legislative discussions about court staffing. By framing the issue not as labor grievance but as a legal and ethical failure, invoking the possibility of criminal liability, the union elevates the stakes and positions itself to demand structural remedies: better staffing levels, clearer accountability mechanisms, and visible consequences for abusers.

For court employees considering coming forward, the pathway is now clearer but not easy. The SFJ's protocol is not advisory—it is essential. Portugal's legal system places a high evidentiary bar on harassment claims, especially when physical evidence or independent corroboration is absent. A "systematic and chronological record," as the union advises, is often the difference between a complaint that advances and one that terminates in preliminary review.

The broader statistics tell a cautionary tale. Across Portugal's workforce, nearly one in three workers reported experiencing harassment in 2025—a rate double the European average from a decade ago. Yet penalties remain rare. In the public sector, the discrepancy is even more pronounced: hundreds of complaints, a handful of sanctions.

The Larger Question: Can the Judiciary Police Itself?

The case now before Portugal's institutions is whether the system designed to adjudicate workplace violations can address systematic violations within its own walls. The law provides tools: presumptions against retaliatory dismissal, definitions of harassment that encompass psychological injury, obligations for employers to investigate and sanction.

Whether these tools will be deployed with the same vigor that courts bring to labor disputes filed by private citizens remains the open question. The SFJ's public appeal and its establishment of an independent reporting channel suggest the union has decided not to rely on that outcome. Instead, it is building parallel institutional capacity—documentation, evidentiary guidance, a dedicated email—to bypass or supplement internal mechanisms.

For now, the union's message is twofold: the abuse is real, widespread, and documented; and if you are experiencing it, here is how to protect yourself by creating evidence that your employer cannot dismiss or downplay.