By Order no. 1621/2021 of 30 December, the Court of Padua stated that there is no general obligation on the employer to negotiate: the employer may legitimately choose the trade union or unions with which to enter into negotiations, and even exclude some of them from the negotiations. Likewise, according to the Court, there is no obligation to negotiate separately. In the case at hand, FIOM CIGL filed an action under Art. 28 of Italian Law no. 300/1970 for anti-union behaviour against the employer – that had excluded it from the negotiations for the renewal of the agreement on the performance bonus (negotiations were only with the FIM CISL). In rejecting the claim, the Court pointed out that the employer cannot intervene in inter-union dynamics. Faced with the refusal of the FIM CISL to negotiate jointly, the company legitimately agreed to negotiate the renewal with the only union that had signed the agreement. Moreover, in the Court’s opinion, the requirement of actuality, necessary for the admissibility of proceedings under Art. 28 of Law 300/1970. In fact, once the company contract has been renewed, the interest of the applying trade union has ceased to exist.

In September, the Court of Florence upheld the argument of the local Fiom CIGL (the “Union”) against the conduct of a company in the procedure to cease production permanently, which led to the dismissal of 422 employees. The Court noted that the Union was informed of the company’s intent only when notified of the collective redundancy procedure, in breach of the duties of information under the National and the Company-level Collective Agreements for metalworkers. Thus, the Union was presented with a fait accompli, without playing any role in the employer’s decision, “in the framework of a democratic and constructive discussion, which should characterise the parties’ positions”. The removal of the effects of that behaviour implies the obligation for the company to (i) properly renew the information omitted and, as a necessary consequence, (ii) the revocation of the procedure. Accordingly, the Court ordered the company to: (i) revoke the notice of opening of the procedure; (ii) implement the consultation and discussion procedures under the collective agreements; (iii) publish the text of the court decision on the most important national dailies and (iv) pay the Union’s legal costs.

Under order no. 27757, published 3/12/2020, the Cassation Court confirmed that renewal of a National Collective Bargaining Agreement (CCNL) only signed by some employer associations, has no effect on application of clauses regarding pay even for companies that belong to non-signatory unions. In detail, a worker obtained an order for payment, part for failure to pay contractual increases in the sector CCNL and part due to the contractual increases in the renewed CCNL. The order was upheld in the first instance, while in the second it was revoked and the company sentenced to pay the difference between the amount of the order and the sum it paid to the worker as a one off for the settlement reached between the workers’ union and employers’ unions that had not initially signed the renewal. According to the Court, appealed to by the employer, in employment the remuneration under the CCNL acquires, as a general rule, a “presumption” of meeting the principle of proportionality and adequacy in the contract economic provisions including in internal relationship between the single compensations established therein. 

The Court’s ruling 1 on 2 January 2020, stated that the requirements of art. 19 of the Workers’ Statute to establish union representatives, with the rights referred to in section 3, should not be confused with the principles stated in art. 28 of the Statute (unfair labour practice repression). Art. 19 requires signing of national collective agreements (or provincial or company collective agreements, but applied in the company) or union participation in negotiation of these agreements, as workers’ representatives. Art. 28 only requires the association to be national. The procedure is for cases where protection of the union’s collective interest to freely exercise its prerogatives is challenged. This interest is distinct and autonomous from individual workers’. The Court of Cassation declared the employer’s transfer of 80% of workers registered or affiliated to a trade union from one plant to another to be an unfair labour practice, even if the company’s underlying needs were legitimate. The employer’s conduct was considered to be harmful to the collective interests of the union. In the Court’s view, the statistical element, which reveals a situation of disadvantage for the union, gives rise to a presumption of discrimination. The employer must provide proof to the contrary.