The aim of this research was to analyze labor and constitutional legislation and to
verify whether Article 856 of the CLT was partially revoked by Constitutional Amendment
45/2004 or if its Labor Court Presidents still have the legitimacy to initiate collective dispute
proceedings ex officio in cases of work stoppage where the legitimate entities to propose the
collective dispute remain inactive. The research methodology employed was deductive;
bibliographic research was used as the means, and the research was qualitative in its
objectives. The conclusion reached was that there is no constitutional inconsistency regarding
Article 856 of the CLT, as there is no contrary foundation in the constitutional text, and there
has been no express repeal of the said article so far. Furthermore, the alleged violation of the
principle of access to justice does not hold ground, as the reform brought by Constitutional
Amendment 45/2004 merely limited the normative power granted to labor courts and
addressed the excessive workload of labor courts without any prior attempts at agreement,
given that the company's activities would be suspended in the presented scenario.
Additionally, the initiation of collective dispute proceedings can also be proposed by the
Labor Public Prosecutor's Office, which is not directly involved in the demand, in cases of
illegal strike, thus invalidating the withdrawal of legitimacy from trade unions, as mentioned
in Article 114, §2 of the Constitution, which states that only interested parties would be
legitimate.
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