Human labor (and right) to the unstoppable phenomenon of online social networks

[Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Tuenti, Twitter... and their performance as an employee: labor law implications]

Abstract

It is an evident fact that, in the last times, social networks have proliferated in Internet (Facebook, Myspace, Tuenti, Twitter...) that allow the interconnection of million users, who, across his profiles, share an enormous quantity of information (own and of third parties), making possible evident options of leisure and scattering, but also commercial and professional activities.

This situation is the origine of juridical problems, among others, in the area of labor relations. The present work analyzes these problems and try to give solutions, as well as lege data as lege ferenda, in the labor context.

The main problems would be: discrimination in the processes of workers' selection when the employer has obtained sensitive information of the profiles of candidates in the social virtual networks; incorporation of social networks to the productive process of the enterprise; or, at the end, the utilization of social networks like instrument of managerial control, submitted to the limits of the constitutional beginning of proportionality and to the Data Protection law.