Negative manifestations of workers on social networks and the employer's disciplinary power: an analysis according to fundamental rights to freedom of expression, honor and image

• Grant number: 17/00251-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2017
• End date: December 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Law - Private Law
• Principal Investigator: Victor Hugo de Almeida
• Grantee: Daniele Zilioti de Sousa
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Labor Law, as a branch of the legal sciences, is immersed in a dynamic context, because labor relations are directly affected by the evolutions resulting from the process of globalization. That said, labor law must metamorphose itself in order to incorporate the effects that innovations, including technological ones, generate in the labor sphere. And, due to the social networks, which can include both subjects of the labor relationship, inherent conflicts have emerged and, as a corollary, a new field of legal debate. The employee, when he expresses via social media, confers concreteness to his right to freedom of expression, a right that is fundamental. In contrast to such freedom, there is the premise that the employer, individual or company, has the right to honor and image. Employers' freedom of expression on social networks may therefore be in an antagonistic position when they express criticism directed at the employer, which may apply sanctions to the subordinate, as it is given by the Brazil's Consolidation of Labor Laws, the prerogative of disciplinary power (Article 2). The objective is to analyze the use of social networks by employees as a result of the exercise of the right to freedom of expression - in its critical connotation and in opposition to other fundamental rights - and what are the legal repercussions of these manifestations in the labor context due to the disciplinary power and the right to honor and the image of the employer. As a method of procedure, the methods of bibliographical and jurisprudential research will be adopted; and, as a method of approach, the deductive. (AU)