Italy: according to a ruling by the Court of Cassation, collective bargaining cannot prohibit intermittent work

According to ruling 29423 of 13 November (here in Italian), a collective convention cannot prohibit a company using intermittent employment contracts. The judges explained that Law 2003, one article of which was called into question in the case in question has been included in the Jobs Act 2015 and it, ‘limits itself to delegating to the collective bargaining process the identification of ‘requirements’ for which an intermittent or casual work employment contract is allowed without explicitly recognizing the power for social partners to prohibit the ability to use this type of contract’. Thus social partners have no veto powers on the use or not, of temporary, sporadic, or intermittent work contracts by companies that are members of a national convention. Even if it is too soon to determine if this ruling will prove to be jurisprudence, the daily economic publication Il Sole 24 Ore from 21 November sees it a ‘seriously groundbreaking.’ According to the Court of Cassation’s interpretation, social partners cannot hinder the use of a flexibility mechanism as intended by legislation, which, the newspaper holds, could create problems for ‘trade union agreements that expressly prohibit recourse to specific employment contracts,’ as is the case for example with the logistics sector collective agreement, and the banking sector collective agreement that is currently under re-negotiation.