Detectives intervention in the labour relations

Abstract

In the field of labour relations, the employer is the holder of the power of management and control. Fitted inside the same one, one finds the possibility to resort to a private detective, since the courts have recognized the legitimacy of his utilization since, in certain situations, like in the cases in which the job is performed out of the workplace or when the worker has his labour relation suspended for a temporary disability, it turns out to the employer very complicated to do it personally, being the contracting of a detective practically the only method to which it is possible to resort to verify that the worker is fulfilling the duty of good contractual faith that demands the regulation from him, and one of the most suitable to demonstrate in the jurisdictional social order the origin of the disciplinary measures that he adopts if, as consequence of the result of the performed investigation, the worker is breaking his obligations, since probably they will be refuted by the worker.

The present study analyzes exhaustively some of the most controversial questions in relation with the control that the private detective of the workers can perform, bearing in mind, on one hand, the existing problematic for fixing of a few limits in his action, since in the last times there have appeared new mechanisms that allow to increase the control up to certain levels that might come into conflict with the right to the private life that any citizen has recognized, included the worker who does not lose it for the celebration of a contract of work, and, on the other hand, the valuation and characterization in the labour procedure of the intervention of the detective and of the mechanisms that has been used in the investigation, since it is becoming more and more relevant its consideration as expert proof, besides as testimonial evidence, having very important consequences before the possible materialization of one appeal with the purpose of checking the raised supposition, being his admissibility at stake.

All these aspects are studied considering the doctrinal criteria, the judicial pronouncements, the in force regulation and other that will be approved soon and will repeal shortly the existing one, avoiding that the figure of the private detective be something slightly tangential to turn it to have a more relevant role, completing the numerous omissions and lacks that have been arising during more than twenty years that have been applied, making critical valuations and offers of the controversial aspects.