The unilateral verbal withdrawal from a collective agreement is legitimate

In Judgment no. 2600 of 2 February 2018, the Court of Cassation reiterated that if the signatory parties to a second-level collective agreement have not expressly provided for the need to serve written notices for termination purposes, the employer’s verbal withdrawal can be considered valid. The case at hand concerned a collective agreement – which set out certain provisions regarding the award of cash bonuses – on an annual basis, with tacit renewal, unless in case of cancellation served by 31 January. A few workers claimed that they had not received payment of a portion of the bonus, and applied for an order for payment of the amounts envisaged in the collective agreement. On the other hand, the employer argued that said agreement was inapplicable, as the company had verbally cancelled it, in the course of a meeting with the trade unions held before 31 January. The Court of Appeal had upheld the claim of the workers, maintaining that, for a withdrawal to be effective, this must be made in a written form. The Supreme Court had a different view, believing that the withdrawal, even if verbal, was effective, in observance of the principle of the freedom of form, since in the case at hand the collective agreement did not mandatorily require a written form in order for the withdrawal to be effective.