The Screen Pandemic

COVID-19, home office and structural precariousness of work in Brazil

Abstract

Between December 2019 and May 2023, humanity watched in astonishment the unfolding of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the global popularization of telework. This regime is the result of the new labor possibilities inaugurated by the flexible company of the twenty-first century, gestated in the cradle of the Productive Restructuring of 1970 and within the technological advances characteristic of the most recent Industrial Revolutions. Although little used in the pre-pandemic period, because it was widely reinforced during the health crisis, telework has become a trend for the world of work. Thus, for jurists and administrators, it is urgent to amplify the debate, trying to resolve the remaining uncertainties regarding the implications of the widespread adoption of telework and its contribution to the processes of structural precariousness, since its legal presence is timid and recent, especially in Latin America, including Brazil. The present study aims to analyze, through the jurisprudential analysis of TRTs in southeastern Brazil, whether the phenomenon of adoption of telework in the country, since the COVID-19 pandemic, has contributed to the advance of the precariousness of work. Bibliographic and documentary research and the analysis of the jurisprudence of the labor courts were employed. The data collected revealed the increase in labor lawsuits related to telework filed during and after the pandemic, and evidenced a series of irregularities committed in the implementation of the regime. Finally, it is believed that this study will contribute to the advancement of reflections on the theme, not yet overcome for administration, sociology or law.