Jobs Act “yes” or “no”. In recent weeks, the CGIL intends to institute a referendum to repeal the well-known labor law.
The law in question was born about ten years ago, when Matteo Renzi was in government and, at his side, was the Minister of Labor Giulano Poletti, then in the PD area… What did it give birth to? As for protections in the event of illegitimate dismissal, the division of workers into two categories, namely those hired “before 7.3.2015” and those hired “after 7.3.2015”. For the former – “the old” -, the protections of the already weakened “art. 18″ (the rule which, after his “furnerization”, in the face of a dismissal contrary to the provisions of the law in a company with more than 15 employees, sanctioned the worker's right to his “reinstatement” in the workplace only in extreme cases or, alternatively, granted him compensation varying between 12 / 24 months' salary). For the latter – “young people” -, under the same conditions as their employer in terms of employment, a single financial compensation based on length of service (where, in practice, illegitimately dismissing a young worker after a few years of hiring would have cost the employer the equivalent of a few months' salary).
That the “jobs act” was – let's say – questionable, we all took note of it and primarily the constitutional court, which, after the entry into force of the law, had to “get involved” on several occasions, correcting its scope, and – it goes without saying – criticizing the “inventors” of the legislative text.
Faced with the CGIL referendum proposal, however, one wonders what the end point of a possible “leap backwards” could be.
The answer, struggling to restore order to the jagged framework of labor laws of the last twenty years (… we have lost count!) is the following: we would return – for those who work in a company with more than 15 employees and have to contest the legitimacy of an immediate dismissal – in the aforementioned “art. 18”, as already said “weakened” by the “Fornero law”, but with “the detail”, not exactly secondary, that this last law, with regard to the procedural form which had favored an “accelerated” treatment of the causes of dismissal, today it no longer exists, and this is thanks to the very recent “Cartabia law”.
A poorly conceived law would therefore be abolished (which is “modern”)… “jobs act” … only had the name in English and for which the judgment of “unsuitability” is not by the writer but by the consultant), but the “art. 18” would once again serve the timescales of a labor trial, as regards the causes of dismissal, deprived of the “urgency”.
In other words, we could return (with the exception of some offices with adequate staffing and perfectly functioning methods) to lawsuits on dismissals destined for the physiological average duration of 2 years (in first instance) with the strong doubt that the protections “to be agreed”, in reality, they once again have to discount a factor that has been little talked about (and little, in concrete terms, addressed): the duration of the disputes.
