October 4, 2021

Labour Relations, Social Inequalities and Trade Unionism

António Casimiro Ferreira

The impacts of recent transformations on production processes, organizational models, and new forms of work delivery, pose challenges to the understanding of phenomena that have an effect on the social, economic and political spheres of our days, such as financialization, globalization and economic internationalization, which are directly linked to the legal phenomena that are the object of this research.

This study seeks to contribute to a critical reflection on the legality of business relationships when they set up mechanisms that aim to defraud the labour legal system. These mechanisms consist of concealing, through market relationships, the responsibility of the company that uses and benefits from labour provided by the workers, which it does not assume as its own, allegedly transferring or outsourcing the activities that are developed by another corporate legal entity. The concealment of employment relationships takes place with the concealment of the type of employer.

The aim is to understand the scope of the theme, as well as the extent of the social effects and impacts that are proving to be profoundly destructive to labour relations. The questions posed by this new form of escape from labour law raise new answers to old challenges, which ultimately relate to the commodification of labour and the depersonalization of labour relations.

It is important to rethink labour law, but not to lose sight of its essence, its reason for existence and the extent of its imbalances in a world where the interests of the strongest are increasingly accepted by a society that is beginning to lose legitimate expectations of a better life and a fairer, more supportive and sustainable world.

Keywords: productive restructuring, outsourcing, labour law, concealment of the employer