Social and Labor Law: Key Principles
Principles of Social Legislation
Concept
These are the guidelines that directly and indirectly inform and inspire certain rules and a number of solutions. They serve to promote and guide the adoption of new standards, guide the interpretation of existing ones, and resolve cases not provided for.
They meet at least four core functions:
- Guiding and Informing Function: Illustrates the legislature and determines its action on higher patterns, proving to be a function of legislative policy to guide those who must enforce the law.
- Legislative or Integrative Function: It is a technical instrument to cover a gap in the legal system, integrating the right to act as an extra source in the absence of law.
- Interpretative Function: Establishes rules for guidance to the judge or interpreter of standard disputes. It is also addressed to the lawyer and the doctrinaire.
- Unifying or Harmonizing Role of Legislative and Judicial Policy: It ensures legal certainty by systematically preserving the unity of law, preventing the legislature and the judge from deviating from the system.
Principles of Labor Law
The Protective Principle
It consists of various techniques to balance the existing differences between worker and employer, preventing those working under the legal dependence of others from becoming victims of abuses that offend their dignity, due to the power of negotiation and different legal and economic imbalances between them.
The Principle of Inalienability
The inalienability of labor rights has two foundations: a public law character, from which most labor laws tend to give the worker the minimum satisfactory conditions to protect their lives, their health, and their families; the other, a tutelary character, from the moment it is advisable to enact the indispensability positively because, otherwise, the autonomy of the parties could make a clean sweep of all labor law.
The Principle of Continuity of Employment
The employment contract is intended to be permanent. In our labor laws, there are several manifestations of this, some of which are as follows:
Principle of Primacy of Reality
This principle gives priority to the facts, i.e., what has actually happened in reality, over forms or appearances, or what the parties have agreed upon. Therefore, in cases of discrepancy between what happens in practice and what emerges from documents signed by the parties or agreements between them, preference should be given to the facts. Prima facie, then, the true facts prevail over the appearance, form, or name assigned to the contract.
Principle of Good Faith
Corresponds to a pattern of conduct that the law imposes on individuals in their social and legal life, especially in terms of enforcing contracts.
Principle of Non-Discrimination
Employment discrimination can be defined as “Any distinction, exclusion, or preference in treatment, which occurs by reason of or in connection with an employment relationship, is based on a criterion of race, color, sex, religion, syndication, political opinion, or any other deemed unjustified, and that has the effect of altering or repealing equal treatment in employment and occupation.”