Understanding Labor Law: Employer and Employee Rights

Elements of Labor Law

The Employment Relationship

The employment relationship between employers and employees arises as a result of the employment contract.

Defining the Employer

In employment law, the employer is the natural person or legal entity that receives paid services from workers who depend on it.

The TRLET (Workers' Statute) expands this definition to include any person, entity, or community property receiving paid services from those who voluntarily work on their own and within the scope of the latter's organization. This definition:

• Extends to real communities (e.g., a community of owners hiring a janitor; the community is the employer, not each neighbor).
• Requires workers to act within the scope of the employer's organization (orders must be obeyed, and if there is disagreement, claims can be made subsequently to the appropriate authority).
• Establishes that work is always a paid activity, making pay an essential element of the employment contract.

Defining the Worker

A worker is a natural person who provides services under the orders of an employer, who receives the benefits and assumes the risks of their activities. (Self-employed individuals are excluded from labor law, as they are not tied to any employer).

• The transfer of benefits and risks of the activity performed by the worker occurs from the beginning of the activity.
• If a freelancer or a business is hired to do a job, the transfer of benefits and risks to the purchaser only takes place when the work has been delivered or the service performed. Until then, these are borne exclusively by the self-employed individual.
• The worker must always be an individual, without any delegation to others (never a legal person).

Employee Rights and Sanctions

Employees cannot be deprived of certain rights as a result of sanctions. Sanctions cannot affect the following:

• Reduction in the duration of vacation.
• Deduction of the right to rest.
• Fines (deductions from wages as a penalty).

Suspension of employment and wages is possible (the worker cannot go to their task for a certain time, and assets will be deducted accordingly). If a certain period passes without a penalty, the prescribed professional misconduct and its effects disappear, so that workers can no longer be punished for such failure.

The TRLET provides that misdemeanors prescribe after ten days, serious ones after twenty, and very serious ones after sixty days. All these deadlines are counted from the date the employer became aware of the commission of the offense. In any case, regardless of the date of knowledge, any offense is barred after six months of being committed.