Active legitimacy ad causam in the collective labor process:

the individual as a legitimate participant in a semantically open system

Abstract

Introduction: Brazilian Procedural Law allows few cases of collective protection through the legitimization of individuals, the main example being the well-known Popular Action.

Objective: Thus, this work’s aim is to analyse the eventual possibility of an individual, through a judicial process, request measures of a collective nature from a semantically open Legal System and, mainly, from a systemic interpretation of the Collective Process’ Microsystem and the Processual Incidents such as the Incident for the Resolution of Repetitive Demands (IRRD) and the Incident for the Assumption of Jurisdiction (IAJ).

Methodology: The methodology applied is eminently deductive and the main research problem is whether jurisdictional provisions with collective effects can exist in an individual labor lawsuit.

Results: With that, it was proved to be extremely important to analyze the current context experienced by the Labor Court in Brazil, as well as the various challenges faced by it, which has worsened significantly in the face of various judicial precedents and even legislative changes that tend to restricting its competence and actions even in the face of a sign from the 2017 Labor Reform to strengthening the System of Precedents.

Conclusion: This work concludes that this System allows, even indirectly, certain individual judicial lawsuits to have effects of a collective nature, which was, in theory, incentivized by article 611-A, §5º of the CLT.

KEYWORDS: Collective effects; Individual Labor Process; Microsystem of Collective Proceedings.