De Luca & Partners’ Think Tank manages and coordinates research, training (internal and external) and editorial activities on labour law matters, protection of personal data and administrative liability of entities.
De Luca & Partners invests in researching and disseminating Employment Law material and for this reason collaborates with Il Sole 24 Ore and with the main employment law publications.
In a ruling of 27 October 2014, the Court of Rome affirmed that the obligation to give a second change to employees dismissed for objectively justified reasons is not breached in the case of a temporary hiring one month before dismissal.
In Judgment No. 23381, entered on 3 November 2014, the Court of Cassation held that it is permissible to provide for a new probation period under a second employment contract concluded between the same parties for the same job, where the called-for probation is designed to meet the needs of a more complete evaluation about the employee’s personal and not just professional aptitudes in relation to the definitive nature of the responsibilities assigned to him.
In its Judgment No. 19665 of 18 September 2014, the Court of Cassation, sitting in plenary session, resolved the conflict in case law concerning the obligation to pay civil penalties on social insurance contributions owed by the employer in the case of unlawful redundancy.
The European law, which was just adopted by Parliament, has taken into account the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union of last 13 February (Case C-596/12), where the Court held that Law 223/1991 was invalid to the extent that is excluded the obligation to comply with the procedure for staff reductions with respect to managers.
As a result of the European law just adopted by Parliament, which sets forth how the procedures concerning collective redundancies are to be applied to managers, the rules and practices to be followed in this regard have changed considerably.
In its Judgment No. 22388 of 22 October 2014, the Court of Cassation held that the principle under which no legal action can be instituted twice for the same cause of action is also applicable to labour relations, including disciplinary proceedings taken against workers.
The new draft of the stability law raises the ceiling for relief from social security contributions to EUR 8,060 (from EUR 6,200) for new hires with permanent contracts and confirms that starting 1 January 2015, subsidised contracts will cease for workers who have been unemployed for more than two years (as provided for in Law No. 407/1990).
The Government aims to eliminate reinstatement for individual economic redundancies, which are no longer in high numbers (18%, according to labour experts), whereas nothing has yet been planned or announced for collective economic redundancies under Law 223/1991, which have been the most frequent types in the recent years of the crisis (estimated to be 60% of the total).
