Case Law

The Supreme Court, with sentence no. 14157/2012, stated that the employer’s decision to substitute employees on strike with employees not on strike or belonging to divisions not interested by the strike does not represent an anti-union behavior if such decision concerning the company structure and the employees’ duties distribution is in line with law and the collective agreement.

Supreme Court, with sentence no. 14197 of August 7, 2012 has established that companies can use private investigators in order to verify if employees commit a crime and that such investigations can concern the employees only and not their cars or bags.

The Court of Cassation, with sentence No. 4709/2012, stated that the employee may refuse to execute his/her working activity if the transfer measure is not properly motivated.

The Court of Cassation, with sentence No. 11465/2012, stated the principle based on which a company, which needs to obtain a more efficient management in order to face an economic downturn, may dismiss an employee for “justified grounds” (so called “giustificato motivo”).

The Supreme Court, with the sentence no. 9965 of the April 11th, 2012, stated that the employer who reinstates only partially an executive of the company union representative, just paying the salary and acknowledging him/her the trade rights but refusing his/her work performance, is subject to administrative sanction provided for by the art. 10, par. 8, of the Law no. 300/70 (so called “Statuto dei Lavoratori”) (i.e. payment of an amount equal to the daily wage due to the employee, for each day of delay, in favour of the INPS Fund for the pensions adjustment).