The Madrid Supreme Court of Justice distinguishes between harassment at work and conflict in the workplace

The High Court of Justice of Madrid, in its Ruling 468/2025 of 20 June 2025 (appeal 386/2025), overturned the decision of the 44th Labour Court of Madrid which had upheld the compensated termination of the contract of a risk prevention technician for alleged harassment at work.

The worker complained of an overload of tasks, belittling and arbitrary demands on the part of his supervisor, but the Court concludes that these facts, although indicative of work-related tensions and demands, do not meet the requirements of systematicity, intentionality and seriousness that define mobbing. It was an organisational conflict, not harassment.

The Court emphasised that a difficult or demanding relationship is not enough to be considered harassment, and recalled the importance of differentiating between work-related discrepancies and truly vexatious conduct. Consequently, it upheld the company's appeal and dismissed the employee's claim in its entirety.

The Chamber established doctrine: mobbing cannot be confused with overload, demands or organisational discrepancies. In order for mobbing to exist, there must be proof of hostile and repeated conduct with the intention of undermining the worker's dignity, something that was not proven in this case. Thus, the SCJ rules out harassment and classifies the situation as a labour conflict, which avoids compensated termination and reinforces the importance of distinguishing between the two cases.