Italy: does the ‘permanent employment contract with rising levels of protection’ that was instituted by the Jobs Act discriminate in situations of collective dismissals?

At the end of November the Naples Appeals Court referred certain measures in the Jobs Act, to both the Italian Constitutional Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union. The issue lies with the ‘employment contract with rising levels of protection’ that allows for relatively easy job dismissals during the first three years of hiring for those hired after 07 March 2015. Workers hired before this date come under Article 18 of the Workers Statute that imposes worker re-instatement if their dismissal is found to be unlawful. Although the permanent employment contract with rising levels of protection primarily sought to facilitate individual jobs dismissals, this case concerns a collective dismissals plan in which a female worker, hired after 07 March 2015, was working on a permanent employment contract with rising levels of protection and as such received a level of protection that was greatly inferior to that of her colleagues. The case has given rise to several issues including: differences in the treatment of workers within the same company who are facing the same event; inadequate protection levels being given to workers hired after 07 March 2015 when they do lose their jobs; and the risk that employers focus first on letting go workers with these types of contracts as they are easier to lay off. The Naples Appeals Court is thus raising the question of the constitutional validity of several aspects of the Jobs Act and is also calling on the CJEU to adjudicate on whether this law complies with the EU charter on fundamental rights. In August the Milan Tribunal went to the CJEU with a similar case that raised a question on the reality of having two different sets of treatment depending on a single hiring date as well as on the efficiency of the protection intended by the Jobs Act in cases of job losses.