Existential Damage: Valuing The Human Person And Working Relations

Abstract

The article points out the importance of studying existential damage in Brazilian law, especially in labor law, as an autonomous type of off-balance-sheet damage, different from moral damage, for example. Anchored in subjective responsibility, the damage to the worker's existence is born with the occurrence of an injury to the employee's life project or his social and family life, arising from an abusive practice of the employer, which deprives him of having a healthy life and performing outside the work environment, embodied, for example, in the requirement of excessive overtime or stressful working hours, thus arising the duty to indemnify. The general objective of this work is to approach the theme referring to existential damage from a civil-constitutional approach, using as a conceptual support the construction of the concept of human dignity and its application in labor relations. An attempt is also made to make an analogy with slave labor, since the occurrence of damage to existence results from the abuse of the employee's right, which in most cases is subjected to degrading and strenuous labor. The in-depth study of existential damage proves to be important due to the fact of its extreme relevance in the legal system, as it serves to protect workers, in order to repair off-balance damages arising from the employment relationship, as well as a means of repressing the employer. Finally, it is important to state that the methodology used in the present work was bibliographic.