Resumo:
In light of the social, economic, political, cultural, religious, legal, and racial violence suffered
by the Black population, which historically occupies labor spaces marked by subordination,
precariousness, maximum exploitation, low pay, and social vulnerability, it is necessary to
discuss the importance of the Labor Judiciary adopting a racialized perspective in its decisions,
combating racial inequality and improving the quality of life of Black workers. With the new
morphologies of work, app delivery workers, who are predominantly Black, young, and poor,
seek social rights guarantees in the labor protection system. However in the face of a judiciary
marked by the reproduction of the legal hermeneutics of whiteness, these workers end up not
being recipients of protection, suffering the effects of judicial rulings that disregard the issue of
race and the social inequalities produced by a racist society. In this sense, this research aims to
point out the criteria that judges and appellate judges of the TRT 5 may follow in assessing
labor complaints filed by platform delivery workers, based on the protocol proposed for
judgment with an ethnic-racial perspective. Through an assessment of academic production and
content analysis of 75 judicial decisions handed down by the Labor Court of Bahia between the
beginning of 2020 and August 12, 2024, this qualitative research critically investigated the
repercussions of the absence of ethnic-racial debate in judgments involving platform delivery
workers. It was observed that only two decisions, handed down by the same judge in different
cases, brought up the ethnic-racial debate as a basis for analyzing the request for recognition of
the employment relationship and payment of severance pay. In addition, it was identified that
TRT 5, which is a space of power occupied mainly by white people, reproduces, albeit
unconsciously, racism in its decisions, missing the opportunity to promote the social
emancipation of this black working class, which sells its labor in the uberized world of work, a
reflection of the neoliberal discourse of entrepreneurship, camouflaging the employment
relationship that often exists. Therefore, the suggested ethnic-racial perspective trial protocol
seeks to guide TRT 5 labor magistrates to think in a racialized way about specific cases
involving these service proletarians, in order to enforce the social labor rights that are denied to
them, perpetuating conditions of inferiority and dehumanization.
