Subsunção, Cognição E Decisionismo Na Inspeção Do Trabalho Brasileira

Abstract

This article is an excerpt from a larger study, recently completed, and has as its object the Brazilian Labour Inspection. In this opportunity, it is tried to approach one of the aspects of the administrative police power of the labor inspection, namely the attribution of vigilance and control. This article, however, proposes a second cut: a critical analysis of the process based in “subsumption” that, in theory, supports the conclusion of the Labour Inspector for the occurrence of the breach of the labor law. It is, in fact, to question the logical operation that determines not only the capture of the infraction phenomenon, but also the dimension of the punitive pretension of the State. Analyzing the glossary of labor illicit acts operated by the Brazilian Labour Inspection – the “Ementário” – this study suggests, after all, that the cognitive process that guides the labor-inspection diligence has at least three decision-making moments well defined. Two of them, located in the instance of “street level bureaucracy”, are shown by the arbitrary choice of the investigative filter and the punitive dosimetry in the specific case. These are modulations of conduct that are expressed in the individual-methodological scope, demarcating the nanorregulatory pretension of the labor-inspection. The third moment, on the other hand, occurs at the institutional level, and can be described as a political and historical process of constructing the labor violation, which aims to balance, simultaneously, the emergence of the institutionalized commitments of the regulatory state, and the contingent social disapproval of certain expressions of labor power, perceived as deviant and, perhaps, perverse.