<p>Organizations typically respond to workplace bullying by implementing an anti-bullying policy. Public sector employees are disproportionately vulnerable to workplace abuse. The recommendations from employers’ organization SALAR to the public sector in Sweden are insufficient for decision-makers to understand workplace mistreatment. In this study the aim has been to investigate all regions' internal governing documents in Sweden, regarding workplace abuse from a power perspective to gain a better knowledge of how employee rights are evaluated and managed in Sweden's public sector. Only 15 of 21 regions has a policy for workplace mistreatment and the policies of all fifteen regions confuse workplace abuse with discrimination, harassment, and sexual harassment. The generic understanding of the problem ignores work environment factors and mimic the logic from SALAR on workplace mistreatment as an individual problem. Also, the routines for managing workplace mistreatment are riddled with contradictions that stirs insecurity of how the problem is going to be handled, leaving both employees and managers in a form of hostage situation. The governing documents display the concept of hierarchical hostage politics by revealing an absence of employee perspective in the governing documents and power dynamics that deprive possibilities to manage workplace mistreatment as a complex problem.</p>