Workplace bullying (mobbing) in Peru: what protection the law gives when it isn't sexual harassment

What counts as workplace bullying under Peruvian law (with no dedicated law yet)

Peru hasn’t yet given non-sexual workplace bullying — what other countries call mobbing — a law of its own, with its own procedure and its own sanction, the way it has for sexual harassment since 1998. What exists instead is a broader, older mechanism: the “acts of hostility” under Article 30 of the Labor Productivity and Competitiveness Law (LPCL), in force since 1997.

That article lists eight situations the law treats as equivalent to dismissal: not being paid on time without a valid reason, a cut to your rank and pay (or ignoring the objective requirements for your promotion), being transferred to a different workplace to harm you, an uncorrected safety or health risk, serious physical violence or verbal abuse against you, discrimination based on sex, race, religion, opinion, language, disability or any other ground, any act against morality or your dignity, and an unjustified refusal to make reasonable accommodations if you have a disability. Several of these are exactly what sustained mobbing typically looks like — arbitrary transfers, isolation, degrading treatment — even though the law doesn’t use that word or require the conduct to repeat over time to trigger the mechanism.

The procedure: formal notice before you can sue

Before you can sue, Article 31 requires you to formally notify your employer in writing, naming the specific act of hostility and giving it a reasonable period — no less than six calendar days — to respond or correct its conduct. That minimum is a floor, not a ceiling: you can give more time if you consider it reasonable, but not less.

Keeping proof of when you delivered that notice matters: it’s the date from which you count whether the employer responded in time, and it’s also evidence that you met the requirement before suing.

Your two options if the hostility continues

If the employer doesn’t correct its conduct, Article 35 gives you two paths, and they’re mutually exclusive — you can’t choose both.

Demand that the hostility stop. You sue for the conduct to end. If the judge rules in your favor, the employer is also fined based on the seriousness of the violation.

End the contract and claim compensation. Instead of demanding it stop, you can end your employment relationship and sue for the same compensation owed for an unfair dismissal (Article 38), regardless of the fine on the employer and separate from your labor benefits, which are calculated on their own.

The 30-day deadline to sue

Whichever path you choose, Article 36 sets a 30-calendar-day statute of limitations from when the act of hostility occurred — the same deadline that applies to unfair dismissal and wrongful dismissal. If you let it lapse, you lose the right to sue over that specific act, even if the hostile conduct continues and you can give notice again over a later act.

How it differs from sexual harassment

If the conduct is sexual or sexist in nature, the general mechanism in this article doesn’t apply: Law N.º 27942 applies instead, which since 2018 no longer requires you to prove you rejected the conduct or that it repeated for it to count as sexual harassment. That law comes with its own procedure — a mandatory Intervention Committee at companies with 20 or more workers, with exact investigation deadlines — that’s more detailed and faster than the general hostility mechanism described on this page.

In practice, this means the path that applies to you depends on the kind of mistreatment you’re facing: for sexual conduct, use Law 27942; for any other kind of hostility — discrimination, isolation, transfers made to harm you — use Articles 30, 31 and 35 of the LPCL.

ILO Convention 190: what it changes, and what it doesn’t

In 2022, Peru’s Congress approved, through Legislative Resolution N.° 31415, ILO Convention 190 on the elimination of violence and harassment in the world of work. Peru deposited its instrument of ratification on June 8, 2022, and the convention entered into force in the country a year later.

The Convention defines violence and harassment as a range of unacceptable behaviors and practices that cause or are likely to cause physical, psychological, sexual or economic harm — a broad definition that expressly covers psychological harm, and therefore mobbing, not just sexual harassment.

What this convention doesn’t do is create, by itself, a specific complaint procedure inside Peru. It’s an international commitment that obliges the Peruvian state to legislate and act in that direction, but the Peruvian law that would carry out that commitment with a dedicated procedure and sanction for workplace bullying — the way one already exists for sexual harassment — hasn’t been enacted yet. In the meantime, the mechanism you can actually use today remains the LPCL’s acts-of-hostility procedure.

If the mistreatment forced you to resign

Not every resignation signed under pressure is an ordinary voluntary one. If you left your job because your employer subjected you to sustained hostile treatment, your situation may fit better as a contract termination for hostility under Article 35 — with a right to compensation — than as an ordinary resignation, which carries no such payment. It’s worth identifying which of the two situations you’re actually in before assuming that what you signed was a voluntary resignation.