Technology, Labor Relations and Labor Law: The Tension between Technique and Person

Abstract

This article analyses the impact of the technological revolution on the worker, subject protected by the labor law principles. From the departing point of the tension between the notions of 'technique' and 'person' that labor law carries from its birth, and with the help of other disciplines such as history, philosophy or sociology, the study goes across the evolution of both concepts to the present. Particularly, this work considers the way in which technological change affects the privileged place assigned by the law to the weakest subject of the productive equation. In this context, the article identifies some institutional and judicial responses already offered in the international sphere, to conclude in the need to update the interpretive tools of labor law, in order to maintain its compensating function while allowing harmonious coexistence with technical and economic progress.