Efetivação dos direitos sociais pelo processo coletivo : tutela de direitos individuais homogêneos na justiça do trabalho

Abstract

The attainment of the wide range of social rights ensured by the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil to workers, most of which subjective individual rights to provision directed at private individuals, is an essential component in the achievement of the society project idealized in the Magna Carta. To this effect, non-constitutional lawmakers have conceived an ingenious system of collective legal protection, which aims at providing speedy and uniform joint processing of comparable de facto situations. There are two archetypal actions in the system denominated Collective Bargaining: public civil action, whose object are diffuse and collective (stricto sensu) rights (said collective lato sensu rights); and civil class action, whose object are individual homogeneous rights, which are dealt with in the present study. The management of such actions has been assigned to several entities, among which the Public Prosecutor's Office and trade unions stand out in the labor area. The principles and peculiarities of Labor Law, mainly related to the employee's lack of economic self-sufficiency, to the public policy aspect of most of its rules and to the correlated nonwaiver of rights set out in Labor Law require, however, adjustments to the patterns of collective actions in ordinary civil proceedings, leading collective legal protection of homogeneous individual rights in Labor Courts away from Labor Law in several aspects, among which the extent of legal standings, the enforcement regime, admissible types of protection. A reflection on concepts and institutes within collective bargaining processes must contribute to improve its practices, bridging the gap between constitutional promises of effective exercise of jurisdiction.