INCOMPLETE SOCIAL STATE: UBERISATION, PEJOTISATION AND THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF LABOUR

Abstract

Context: Platform capitalism transforms labour relations through uberisation and pejotisation, contemporary forms of precariousness. In Brazil, this transformation affects a social protection system with a specific historical condition: unlike European welfare states, the country constitutionalised social rights without having previously consolidated the structures of the liberal state, making formal employment the near-exclusive channel through which the working population accesses social protection.

Objectives: The article analyses uberisation and pejotisation in light of the social function of labour enshrined in the 1988 Brazilian Federal Constitution, testing the hypothesis that the dissolution and concealment of employment relationships promoted by platforms do not merely represent a technological transformation, but a rupture with the constitutional project of the social state.

Methodology: It adopts a theoretical and documentary approach, analysing the relevant legislative, doctrinal and jurisprudential landscape, including Themes 1,291 and 1,389 of the Brazilian Supreme Court, both pending judgment. It draws on Paulo Bonavides' account of the incomplete transition from the liberal to the social state and on the sociology of labour of Ricardo Antunes and Ludmila Costhek Abílio to understand algorithmic control as subordination without legal recognition.

Results: It concludes that the absence of a regulatory framework for platform work transfers to the Judiciary the task of filling a gap that is, above all, constitutional in nature, and that the social function of labour, as a structuring principle of the economic order, must guide both judicial interpretation and legislative construction on the subject.