The 2017 Finance Bill has been approved

On 7 December 2017, the Senate definitively approved bill no. 2611 relevant to the “Government Budget for the 2017 financial year and the multi-annual budget for the three-year period 2017-2019” (the so-called 2017 Finance Bill). The main developments in terms of “employment” include: (i) the increase in the value of production bonuses with a fixed rate of 10%; (ii) the abolition of the dismissal tax for workers involved in contract changes and (iii) the extension, for 2017, of the obligatory 2-day leave for working fathers that may be used within 5 months from the birth of a child and which, as from 2018, will be increased to four days. Concerning pensions, the main developments concern: (i) flexibility for workers who wish to retire from the age of 63 (APE); (ii) early retirement for workers who started working early (before 20) and are in a condition of particular difficulty; (iii) simplification of the retirement procedure for workers who perform stressful work and (iv) extension of the so-called “woman option” to women workers born in the last quarter of 1958. As regards young people, particularly worthy of note is the exemption for 36 months from the obligation to pay the contributions by employers for students employed on permanent contracts from 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2018, and who have carried out school-work activities with the same.