Direito Processual do Trabalho
Core concepts
Material competence comes from art. 114 of the Constitution, widened by EC 45/2004 to include collective actions and other relations of work. Territorial competence follows art. 651 of the CLT, generally the place where the service was rendered. Understand the UNA hearing, the exceptions (impediment, suspicion, incompetence), revelia and confissao ficta (Súmula 74 TST) and the burden of proof (art. 818 CLT and art. 373 CPC): the claimant proves constitutive facts, the defendant proves impeditives, modificatives and extinctives.
Appeals: recurso ordinario (art. 895), recurso de revista (art. 896, now with transcendence), agravo de instrumento and embargos de divergencia. Study preparo, deposito recursal and free legal aid (Lei 13.467, with ADI 5.766). Execution: embargos a execucao (art. 884), agravo de peticao (art. 897) and penhora.
Traps
The most common trap is inepcia for generic or illiquid claims (art. 840, §1), which requires liquid pleadings. Another is dialeticity: a recurso may be rejected if it does not attack the grounds of the decision. Recuso adesivo is incompatible with embargos de declaracao. Revelia does not automatically mean success for the claimant, since the judge still examines the claim and the presumption of truth does not apply to rights that cannot be disposed of.
Rule of thumb
In confissao ficta questions, check whether the only defense was a preliminary objection. Worked example: a defendant who alleges only ilegitimidade passiva and misses the hearing is not automatically confessa; the judge must decide the preliminary first (Súmula 74, II).