A função punitiva da responsabilidade civil em acidentes de trabalho

Abstract

More than one hundred years of the first claim movements to improve working conditions, the deal with the lawsuits arising from industrial injury shows that the issue remains one of the great evils afflicting the working class. In Brazil, the rates of industrial accidents and occupational diseases are significant, with dreadful consequences for the worker, his family and to society as a whole, since there is no way to ignore the high number of deaths and mutilations. Starting from the assumption that the vast majority of claims is due to the failure to comply with health and safety at work regulations, the following report aims to study the feasibility of applying the punitive function of civil liability in headquarters of industrial injury, considering that there is no legal rule in Brazilian law system. The reflection which is done has as a first milestone international documents that view labor as a right human, that will be analyzed together with the 1988 Federal Constitution and others infraconstitutional regulations, in other to prove that the traditional civil liability functions – to compensate and to reimburse – are no longer able to fulfill the current demands, notably when it comes to industrial injury, where the consequences turn stronger colors. The punitive function could be applied to the most serious situations, as a further tool for compelling employees to put in place security measures to prevent claims. The aim is to contribute to the debate on this issue, since, although the matter is not yet systematized, the labor exploitation done in contumacious contempt for workers must not be allowed, can not forget legal parameters, in exclusive searching of disproportionate profitability and forgetting the human condition of the worker and his family.