(Finance) – The Consult yesterday he declared the issues of legitimacy constitutional of articles 3 (first paragraph) and 10 of the legislative decree of 4 March 2015, n.23, which, in implementation of the so-called Jobs Act), introduced the permanent employment contract with increasing protections, in relation to the seniority of service. Also considering the parliamentary work and the overall aim pursued by the Jobs Act, the Constitutional Court held that the reference contained in the enabling law to “layoffs cheap” concerned both individual ones, for justified objective reasons, and collective ones.
The ruling originates from the question of legitimacy raised by the Court of Appeal of Napleswhich had therefore turned to the Council, criticizing the regulation of collective dismissals as regards the consequences of the violation of the criteria for choosing workers in redundancy. Compensatory protection was provided to compensate for the damage suffered by the worker, but no longer there protection reintegration in the workplace, in symmetry with the hypothesis of dismissal for justified objective reasons.
There enabling law had in fact excluded, for the “economic dismissals” of workers hired with contracts with increasing protections (starting from 7 March 2015), the possibility of reinstatement of the worker, and had provided for financial compensation, limiting the right to reinstatement to null and discriminatory dismissals and specific cases of unjustified disciplinary dismissal.
The Court therefore excluded that there had been – as the Naples Court of Appeal instead claimed – the violation of the directive criteria of the enabling law. Furthermore, the Council deemed the complaint of violation of the law to be unfounded principle of equalitycomparing “elderly” workers (those hired until 7 March 2015), who retain the more favorable previous regulation and therefore reinstatement in the workplace, and “young” workers (those hired after that date), to whom it applies the new regulations of the Jobs Act.
The reference storm on the date of hiring makes it possible to differentiate the situations: the new discipline of dismissals – explains the Council in the press release with which it announced today’s sentence, n.7 of 2024 – is aimed at encouraging employment and overcoming precarious employment and is therefore only foreseen for “young” workers. The legislator was not required, on a constitutional level, to make this new regulation applicable also to those who were already in service. Finally, the Court found the indemnity protection to be inadequate.
Currently, the worker who is illegitimately dismissed as a result of a staff reduction procedure is entitled to an indemnity (not subject to social security contributions and for the calculation of severance pay), of an amount equal to the number of monthly payments of the last reference salary; amount determined by the judge based on the criteria indicated by the Court in sentence no. 194 of 2018, in any case not less than six and not more than thirty-six monthly payments.
The Court also further pointed out to the legislator that “the matter, the result of stratified regulatory interventions, can only be reviewed in overall terms, which concern both the distinctive criteria between the regimes applicable to different employers and the dissuasive function of the remedies provided for the various cases”.