By order no. 10663 of 19 April 2024, the Italian Court of Cassation stated that the employer bears the burden of proof in proving that remuneration has been properly paid.
The worker filed an application for summary judgment to obtain an order against the company to pay the amount indicated in the November 2015 pay slip.
In the first instance, the first instance Court found that the payment was due to the worker.
The company appealed to the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal upheld the first instance decision, ruling that the employer had not discharged its burden of proof relating to proving in court that the sum had been paid.
The Italian Court of Cassation – confirming the Court of Appeal decision – preliminarily noted that, once the existence of an employment relationship has been ascertained, the employer is under a strict duty of proof to establish that the remuneration has been paid. The employer can do this by means of the normal documentation i.e., regulatory pay slips bearing the worker’s signature. If the employer cannot prove that it has paid the remuneration due to the employee through pay slips, it must provide appropriate documentation of the relevant payments that it has made in relation to the employee’s individual claims.
According to the Italian Court of Cassation, giving employees at the time of payment of remuneration a statement containing an indication of all the constituent elements of the remuneration does not prove payment where the worker states that it is inconsistent with the remuneration actually paid.
According to the Italian Court of Cassation, the burden falls on the worker only if he/she, after signing the pay slip, alleges that the remuneration indicated in the pay slip is inconsistent with the remuneration paid.
As the present case did not fall within the latter situation, the Italian Court of Cassation rejected the company’s appeal.
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An employee dismissed for drug trafficking has been reinstated and compensated. The drug related conviction occurred in the past and pre-dated the employment, when the company took over the staff from the outgoing company after taking over a contract held under a public administration tender. The Italian Court of Cassation, employment division, by order no. 8899 of 4 April 2024 held that the material fact existed but that this did not give rise to a legal ground: an old conviction has no disciplinary relevance where the employer does not prove “the relevance of the old facts on the relationship’s operation”. A criminal judgment that becomes final during the relationship, onthe other hand, may trigger the employer’s withdrawal for just cause if the relationship of mutual trust with the company fails.
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The quantity of work is not synonymous with the quality of the work. Therefore, if it is a question of comparing a part-time worker with a full-time worker in relation to the amount of work performed (quantity), it is appropriate to apportion the salary based on the hours worked (so that the part-time worker receives, in proportion to the hours worked, the same pay as the full-time worker). But if it is a question of comparing workers of the same level where one is part-time and the other full-time, in relation to the service provided (quality), then it is not fair, and indeed it is occupational discrimination, to apportion experience acquired (professional skills) on the basis of hours worked. This was established by the Italian Court of Cassation in judgment no. 4313 of 19 February 2024, which added that penalising part-time work is discriminating against women, who are more likely to work part-time.
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With its order of 4 January 2024, the Court of Ravenna referred to the European Court of Justice the judgment of the Italian legislation on the calculation of absences from work caused by disabling diseases in the protected period (periodo di comporto).
The question posed to the European Court of Justice can be summarised as follows: can the 180-day protected period provided for by the Confcommercio National Collective Bargaining Agreement (Contratto Collettivo Nazionale di Lavoro, ‘CCNL’) (which applies without distinction to both disabled and non-disabled persons) be regarded as a reasonable accommodation that is sufficient for avoiding indirect discrimination against disabled workers?
The order is based on Directive 2000/78/EC, relating to equal treatment in employment and occupation of disabled workers, implemented in Italy by Italian Legislative Decree no. 216/2013.
On the basis of this Directive, a line of case-law has developed at Community level and, subsequently, at national level, which has held that the indiscriminate application of the same period of protection to disabled workers and non-disabled workers amounts to indirect discrimination. This is because it results in unequal treatment to the disadvantage of the disabled person who, due to the vulnerability inherent in the disability, is placed at a particular disadvantage compared to other workers, given the risk of greater possibility of accumulating days of absence and thus more easily reaching the limits of the protected period.
According to this line of case-law, the dismissal of a disabled person who, because of that disability, exceeds the protected period, must be declared null and void, as it is discriminatory.
The referring judge, after citing the European Court of Justice case on which the national case law in the lower courts and the Court of Cassation is based, raised doubts on the need to prescribe a specific duration of the protected period for disabled people, considering that the Italian legislation on illness already provides significant protection to the disabled person. The judge also expressed doubts about the applicability of mechanisms such as the employer’s deduction of periods of absence due to disability from the protected period.
Among the reasons preventing the introduction of differentiated protection, the Court of Ravenna noted that it would be impossible for the employer to distinguish absences caused by common illness from those due to disabling diseases, given that privacy regulations do not oblige the disabled person to disclose his or her state of health.
For the reasons summarised above, the referring court therefore asked the European Court of Justice to rule on the following questions:
(1) Does Directive 2000/78/EC preclude national legislation which does not provide for different rules between workers who can be classified as disabled and workers who cannot?
(2) If the national legislation were to be regarded in the abstract as constituting indirect discrimination, is the legislation itself nevertheless objectively justified by a legitimate aim and are the means of achieving that aim appropriate and necessary?
(3) Can the provision of unpaid leave, at the worker’s request, amount to suitable and sufficient reasonable accommodation for avoiding discrimination?
(4) Can an accommodation consisting of the employer’s duty to grant a further period fully paid by it, without obtaining consideration for work, be regarded as reasonable?
(5) For the purposes of assessing the discriminatory conduct of the employer, can (for the purposes of establishing the lawfulness or otherwise of the dismissal) the fact that even a possible further period of stability in the relationship paid for by the employer would not have enabled the disabled person to return to work, given his or her continuing illness, be taken into account?
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In its very recent judgment no. 2274 of 23 January 2024, the Italian Court of Cassation ruled that it is lawful for an employer to give notice of a second dismissal pending a judgment concerning a previous dismissal based on different grounds. However, the second dismissal has no effect if the first dismissal is declared lawful by a final judgment.
An employee, pending proceedings relating to a first dismissal, brought legal proceedings challenging a second disciplinary dismissal imposed on him by his employer.
The proceedings relating to this second dismissal were settled by the so-called ‘summary phase’ of the Fornero Proceedings with the annulment of the dismissal as only one of the alleged facts had been proven.
Both the employee and the employer appealed against the summary phase order.
The two sets of appeal proceedings were not joined and ended with two separate judgments, both declaring the invalidity of the supervening second dismissal. This was because, pending those judgments, the first instance court had held the first dismissal to be lawful and, subsequently, the Court of Appeal, again with reference to the first dismissal, had declared the worker’s appeal inadmissible.
The two judgments delivered in the context of the appeal phase relating to the second dismissal were appealed against by both the employer and the employee.
The Court of Appeal – following the intricate procedural sequence of events summarised above – declared the second dismissal invalid on the basis that there had been a judgment, albeit not final, which had affirmed the lawfulness of the first dismissal.
The employer appealed to the Italian Court of Cassation against the Court of Appeal’s decision.
Pending the appeal to the Italian Court of Cassation proceedings relating to the second dismissal, that court also ruled on the first dismissal, confirming its lawfulness.
In the judgment under discussion, the Italian Court of Cassation judges therefore noted, preliminarily, the loss of interest on the part of the employer in insisting on the annulment of the ruling declaring the invalidity of the second dismissal, because such ineffectiveness was now to be considered confirmed by the final judgment.
It was only to rule on the costs of the proceedings that the Italian Court of Cassation upheld the employer’s appeal on the following grounds.
In the first place, the Court ruled that, in an employment relationship, the employer, if it has already given the employee notice of dismissal, may lawfully give notice of dismissal for a second time, based on a different ground or reason, because the latter is completely autonomous and distinct from the first.
According to the Italian Court of Cassation judges, both acts of withdrawal are in themselves theoretically sufficient to achieve the purpose, since the second dismissal is effective only in the event that the previous dismissal is held to be invalid or ineffective by a final judgment.
It follows that the Court of Appeal should have ruled on the lawfulness or otherwise of the second dismissal, since the judgment relating to the first dismissal had not – at the time – yet been concluded with a final judgment.
The Italian Court of Cassation, accepting the appeal brought by the employer, consequently ordered the employee to pay the legal costs of the proceedings.
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