On December 3 the Italian senate approved the enabling draft law called the Jobs Act with 116 in favor, 112 against and one abstention. The Jobs Act is the government’s pillar for labor market reform and it is looking to implement the law quickly, by January 2015. One of the mainstays of the reform is a type of permanent work contract with progressive employee protection levels. This type of contract will come under a specific dismissal regime. The government wants this type of contract to become the norm and thereby avoid the ‘elephant in the corner’, known as Article 18 of the Workers Statute. Article 18, an extremely thorny issue for several Italian governments, currently allows for an employee’s re-instatement should s/he have been unfairly dismissed.
Before calling for yet another confidence vote (the government has already called 31 confidence votes) Giuliano Poletti, the Minister for Labor reiterated the fiscal advantages contained in the Stability law (c.f. article No.8768) that aim to encourage employment on the new labor reform’s permanent contracts containing progressive employee protection. He also announced that the government would look to implement the decrees as soon as possible so that the law would come into force in January 2015.
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