The protection of the fundamental rights of workers in the new labour protective procedure

Abstract

This paper critically examines the development that the Chilean labour doctrine of the application of fundamental rights in labour relations has made. Thus, based on the study of the legal rules governing the labour protective procedure of workers’ fundamental rights (which was established in articles 485 et seq. of the Labour Code), a new way of interpreting these rules is proposed. The thesis argued here is that these rules allow the protection of the fundamental rights of the worker against the employer, not as an opposition of both fundamental rights, but as a specific dispute between the employer’s legal powers and the rights of employees. In this sense, the dispute is not solved based on weighing up two fundamental rights, but by means of a more complex analysis of the specific rules governing those powers and rights in our legal system.