Abstract

MANGARELLI, Cristina. Tendencies in Labor Law. Gaceta Laboral, Apr. 2009, vol.15, no.1, p.87-100. ISSN 1315-8597.

This study analyzes some of the current tendencies in labor law. The universalizing of labor law and the possible validity of a set of such laws in the whole world through different mechanisms, configure one of the tendencies of greater significance. There are changes in the system of sources. Some instruments may be indicating the transit and part of the content of a future international public social order. Codes of conduct that recognize labor rights and work environment conditions, brought together in unilateral declarations by companies, become obligatory once the workers have been notified. The determination of the employer through figures such as the “complex employer” and the broadening of company responsibility (solidarity) in the case of sub-contracting or intermediation, constitute legal protective mechanisms in the face of productive decentralization. Utilization of civil law in the case of a lack in the labor norm, has amplified particularism. The current that postulates applying concepts of common law, even contravening what is established in the particular norm or concept of labor law, places the specialty of this law in crisis. The tendencies indicated show that we are facing an evolution or re-founding of labor law with protective mechanisms that complement the traditional ones, even though particularism, in a certain way, also finds itself in crisis.

Keywords: Tendencies; international public social order; codes of conduct; particularism; employer.