Under order no. 8265/2020, the Court of Cassation defined the representative requirements that a second-level company agreement must contain to be indisputable to third parties, including INPS (National Institute for Social Security). The order disallowed contribution reduction on performance bonuses based on a company agreement signed annually by the employer and a workers’ representative. Ruling in INPS’s favour, the Court stated company agreements were comparable to the binding effect of national collective agreements, even if they were intended to be applied to a company or part of it. This was because they were not a sum of individual contracts but deeds involving trade union autonomy and a plurality of collective workers. In the Court of Cassation’s opinion, a company agreement protects the collective interests of the company’s working community and any inseparability of the resulting regulations justifies its “erga omnes” effectiveness. The Court said company agreements between the employer and a non-unionist workers’ representative do not permit conditions for contribution reduction because they do not meet the representative requirements. In the Court’s opinion, they have the nature of individual employment contracts, albeit with multiple members or stakeholders.
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