THE LABOR INSPECTOR SEARCHING FOR …GODOT: UNDECLARED DISTANCE WORK
Undeclared labor has become an increasingly present phenomenon nowadays. Due to the pandemic context, there has been a transition towards working from home or under telework regime. These particular forms of individual labor contracts allow for greater flexibility in terms of the place where a natural person works but, on the downside, they allow the parties to disguise the agreement or to avoid fulfilling the formalities imposed by the Law, such as concluding the contract in a written form and registering its elements in the General Record of Employees. In light of the aforementioned, we aim to identify if the labor inspectors have effective means of identifying the cases of undeclared labor when natural persons are working remotely. Through this paper, in the first section, we discuss the legal background both at the national as well as at the international level, in order to shed light on the concept of undeclared work. The following two sections will be dedicated to analysing if the inspection has any perspective of being an effective mean of identifying the situations of undeclared labor. Finally, several directions of action are contoured – as de lege ferenda proposals – so as to tackle the issue of undeclared work.