Court of Cassation: the choice of place of employment comes within the employer’s organizational powers

With its judgment No. 5056 of 15 March 2016, the Court of Cassation established that the determination of the place of employment comes within the employer’s organizational powers, and is only limited by the provisions governing the question of employee transfers. In the case in hand, the local Court of Appeal confirmed the court of first instance’s decision to reject the claim submitted by a female employee, who challenged the employer’s orders to stop working from home, and to work at the company’s premises instead. She claimed that said orders breached Article 2013 of the Italian Civil Code. The Court of Cassation, in confirming the decision of the court of first instance, pointed out that in the case in question the company’s order to change the place of employment was legitimate, and thus the employee cannot justifiably complain about an increase in work owing to the change of place of employment, in that in keeping with previous case law, the Court concluded that in the case in question, the provisions of law governing transfers “are not at stake due to the impossibility of identifying the employee’s home as a separate productive unit”.