Italy: government facilitates smart-working in 6 Northern Italy regions that are battling with the coronavirus outbreak

A new Ministerial decree gives employers in six northern regions recourse to agile working arrangements for their employees, even in the absence of individual written agreements as intended by the Law 81, 2017 that regulates smart-working. The decree is valid until 15 March and the regions concerned are: Lombardy, Veneto, Piedmont, Liguria, Emilia-Romagna and Friuli. The decree also applies to all employees living in the six regions but working outside of these. The statement from the Labor Ministry from 26 February clarified that legally mandatory information procedures could be carried out online by way of documentation provided by the INAIL, the National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work. Since the start of the week of 24 February, major businesses in the Lombardy region have been augmenting their smart-working provisions (c.f. article No. 11676).