LABOR LAW: SUPREME COURT JUDGING EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP – THE ISSUE OF PLATFORM WORK AND THE "PEJOTIZATION" OF EMPLOYEES (CONTRACTED BY LAW EMPLOYEES)

Abstract

This scientific article analyzes the complex relationship between the phenomenon of digital platform work and the process of transformation into legal entities (pejotização), in light of the jurisprudence of the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF). The investigation starts from the premise that the Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterized by the digital economy and the business model based on technological platforms, has promoted profound transformations in labor relations, challenging the classic paradigms of Labor Law built throughout the 20th century. Through national and foreign doctrinal review, analysis of judicial precedents and comparative law study, the work examines how the STF has faced the issue of characterization of employment relationship in cases involving app drivers, delivery workers and other digital platform workers. The transformation into legal entities (pejotização), understood as the practice of transforming employment relationships into business contracts through the constitution of legal entities, is analyzed as a flexibilization strategy that may imply labor fraud and precariousness of working conditions. The study demonstrates that the STF jurisprudence has oscillated between the protection of fundamental labor rights and the recognition of new forms of work organization, seeking balance between technological innovation and the protection of social rights. It concludes with the need to build regulatory frameworks that make the dynamics of the digital economy compatible with the preservation of the essential core of labor rights, avoiding both social regression and the freezing of technological development.