ITALY Law and Practice Contributed by: Angelo Zambelli, Barbara Grasselli and Alberto Testi, Zambelli & Partners
Should the parties fail to reach an agreement or, in any case, after seven days have elapsed without any sum - mons by the Labour Office, the employer can serve the dismissal. Collective Dismissals Collective dismissals are triggered if all of the follow - ing conditions are satisfied: • the company employs more than 15 people; and • the company intends to dismiss at least five employees, within 120 days, in the same produc - tion unit or in a number of units within the same province. The employer should notify the staff representatives (if any) and the relevant (external) trade union of the decision to proceed with the collective dismissal. If there are no staff representatives, the notification has to be sent to the trade unions of the sector that is most representative at a national level. The procedure pro - vided by the law lasts a maximum of 75 days. The first phase of the procedure is carried out with the unions and should be completed within 45 days (23 days if the number of employees involved is less than ten) from the delivery date of the communication starting the procedure. If the parties fail to reach an agreement, there is anoth - er phase before the employment office. This second phase cannot last longer than 30 days (15 days if the number of employees is less than ten). The dismissals may be served within a period of 120 days from the conclusion of the procedure unless the parties have agreed on a longer term. The collective dismissal procedure also applies to executives ( dirigenti ), but it does not apply to fixed- term workers and temporary workers. Effective as of 1 January 2022, an additional informa - tion and consultation procedure – to be triggered 180 days before the statutory one by employers staffed with 250 or more employees (except for those which meet certain requirements; for example, they are fac - ing a financial crisis) – has been established.
This procedure applies whenever the above employ - ers intend to: • shutdown a production unit, thus fully decommis - sioning the relevant activities; and • dismiss at least 50 employees owing to the above shutdown. Within such a procedure, the employer – among others – must draft and supply to the unions and public bod - ies a plan whereby it has to specify those measures which are planned to be adopted to mitigate negative consequences on redundant employees (eg, recourse to social shock absorbers, payment of an incentive to leave to employees who “accept” to be dismissed, measures aimed at their professional re-qualification) and to clarify if there are potential acquirers for its business or an undertaking hereof. A meeting among the employer, the unions and public bodies, which is aimed at the joint examination of the plan, must be scheduled. Failure to trigger the above additional procedure entails the invalidity of the dismissals (either collec - tive or individual ones) served by the employer. 7.2 Notice Periods The notice period – which is provided only in case of dismissal for justified reasons – varies depending on the NCBA applied by the employer and on the senior - ity and level of the employee. The employer can provide payment in lieu of notice. In each case of termination (even for resignation or gross misconduct), the employee is entitled to: • indemnity in lieu of holidays and leave accrued but not used; • severance pay (the “ trattamento di fine rapporto ”, or TFR), that corresponds to about 7.41% of the overall remuneration earned from time to time by the employee during the employment relationship; this amount is typically set aside annually on the company’s balance sheet, unless the employee has chosen to transfer it to a specific complemen - tary pension fund; and
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