Employment: “The Jobs Act marches on though weighed down by taxes and bureaucracy” (Corriere Economia, 4 July 2016 – Vittorio De Luca)

The comment of Mr. Vittorio De Luca regarding the impact of the Jobs Act was quoted in an article written in Corriere Economic on 4 July 2016.

The opinion of specialised lawyers at a year and a half from the reform.

Positive effects. Contributions, taxes and requirements to decrease.

A year and a half from the approval of the first measures of the Jobs Act, the opinion of companies is basically positive. At least this is what law firms that specialise is employment law are hearing. Corrective interventions should be made, especially in terms of greater simplification of the law, but the overall structure of the reform has met with the consensus of the business world.

Opinions “The Jobs Act on average has been positively evaluated by companies in all industries. An opinion that was anything but a given, because company expectations for an overall intervention and real reform were very high, explained Evangelista Basile, partner at Ichino Brugnatelli e Associati. There was no lack of criticism for certain “promises” that were not kept, for example those for a simplification that was clearly not strong enough. Specifically, I perceived a very positive and basically consistent opinion on the increased protection based on seniority and contribution breaks for open-end hiring contracts: two incentives, one of a legal type and one economic, which convinced many businesses to start hiring employees again”. Even for the Italian branches of the British law firm Simmons Simmons, “the balance sheet is without doubt positive for almost all of our clients, above all international ones explained Davide Sportelli, head of the Labour department. The main data that emerges is that of a renewed, more dynamic job market. The biggest advantage for companies with more than 15 employees is unquestionably represented by the possibility of estimating precise economic risks in cases of dismissal. Basically, if the dismissal of a worker hired after 7 March 2015 is declared unlawful, the employer will now have to sustain risks clearly lower than the higher ones of one time, and which can be determined beforehand”.

Adjustments  Thus the Jobs Act has made regulation of employment much better suited to the needs of companies. Despite this, “companies continue to be frightened by the difficulty of creating laws that are too complex, lack of dismissal flexibility for previously hired and slowness of the social security and pension laws”, underlined Vittorio De Luca, managing partner of De Luca & Partners. Based on a survey conducted by the firm on a sample of more than 200 chief executive officers, general counsels and HR managers, 40% of which international groups, the companies especially like the contract with increased protection based on seniority and the contribution exemption introduced by the Stability Law. «However, the greatest obstacle to investments and hiring continues to be the high cost of labour, followed by the difficulties created by bureaucracy and laws which are too complex”, added De Luca. Regardless of the positive or negative opinion attributed to it, the Jobs Act represents a “turning point” reform. “No company exists, at least for some specific aspect that has been regulated, that has not been impacted”, commented Claudio Morpurgo, the founder of Morpurgo e Associati. The most significant changes include “the elimination of project-based contracts and the consequent stricter definition of cases admissible as term and consultation contracts. The Jobs Act has made contracts less stable with inclusion of increased protection based on seniority to ratify unlawful dismissals and introduced significant social shock absorbers for unemployed workers. Basically, even if incomplete and often conflicting, it still brought a wind of renewal to the job market”.

Duties Stefano Trifirò, of Trifirò Partners, indicates the need to revise the laws of ius variandi, i.e. the possibility offered to companies to change the employee’s duties in pejus. “A legal intervention created by the crisis, which mainly looks at maintaining the job and not protecting the worker’s know how. An employee who works in a demoted position will have greater difficulty being rehired on the market. Moreover, the reform is ill-suited for manager positions, who, being particularly qualified professional figures, would have a hard time adapting to performance of lower profile duties. In addition, since the service of managers has an extremely trustful nature, the fact of trying to save the job “at all costs” goes against the interest of the employer”.