Employee dismissal for unjustified absence on a public holiday is unlawful (Newsletter Norme & Tributi n. 179 Camera di Commercio Italo-Germanica – Vittorio De Luca, Roberta Padula)

In judgment no. 8956 of 4 April 2024, the Italian Court of Cassation addressed the issue of whether dismissal of an employee for taking unjustified absence on a public holiday is unlawful.

An employee initiated legal proceedings to obtain a declaration that her dismissal was unlawful. The disciplinary offence alleged against her was “unjustified absence for more than three days, including non-consecutively, in a two-year period”. In the proceedings, she argued that the dismissal was unlawful for having included a Sunday as a day of absence. The Italian Supreme Court upheld the worker’s application, stating that “unjustified absence from work under Article 55-quarter, letter b, of Italian Legislative Decree no. 165 of 2001 presupposes that the worker did not attend and failed to perform work on a day when he or she should have done so. This requirement is not satisfied if [the day of absence] is a public holiday, on which the worker was not obliged to go to work, regardless of the absence of a valid justification for the absence from work on the days immediately before and after the public holiday”.