How do Chilean workers cope with the workplace violence?

Abstract

Workplace violence (WV) is an important work stressor and produces serious consequences at the individual and organizational level. The ways to face the WV include the measures to prevent it and face it at the individual, collective and organizational level. These ways of dealing with WV moderate the relationship between WV and mental health outcomes. The literature has preferably studied the consequences of WV meanwhile the ways of coping and prevent it have been insufficiently investigated, with no previous studies in Chile. The objective of the article is to analyze the ways of dealing with workplace violence in a non-probabilistic, intentional, sequential and conceptually oriented sample of 70 chilean workers who were interviewed in depth. The passive individual coping is the one that predominates in the accounts of the men and women interviewed; they turn to active coping when the abuse is repeated. The mediation of the labor union, the support from colleagues and the organization are valued positively; and there are contradictory opinions regarding the management by government organization.