On 20 May 1970, the Parliament of the Republic approved the law n. 300 defined the Statute of workers' rights: a real turning point in the field of industrial relations and labor relations, under the pressure of the so-called hot autumn of 1969.
The final vote took place in the Chamber - the legislative process had begun in the Senate - with 217 votes in favor of the center-left majority to which were added the liberals; while the PCI and its leftist allies abstained (it was not a great test of political acumen).
Minister of Labor was the Christian Democrat Carlo Donat Cattin who had replaced the socialist Giacomo Brodolini, who died on 11 July 1969, in the ownership of the Dicastery, to whom credit must be given for having promoted the initiative which led to the passing of law n.300 the following year. But Gino Giugni is universally recognized as ''the father of the Statute'' because his contribution, with both ministers as head of the Legislative Office, was fundamental. Therefore, nothing is taken away from the merit of two important political personalities of the First Republic, to attribute to Gino Giugni that impressive turnaround in the field of industrial relations, because the cultural rather than juridical setting of the Statute gave rise to the innovations that Gino, as a jurist, had imprinted on trade union law.
Then talk about ''supporting legislation'' it raised several reservations and perplexities (with confirmation in the vote in Parliament) even among left-leaning labor lawyers, close to the PCI and the CGIL, students of Ugo Natoli, the founder of the historic Rivista juridical del lavoro.
Giugni's was a modern vision, influenced by the American experience (the Wagner Law of 1935, the spearhead of the age of FD Roosevelt) and aimed at recognizing trade union freedoms in the workplace through their attribution to the external trade union (which can convene the assembly during working hours, collect membership fees, appoint company representatives, guarantee paid leave to its production managers, disseminate propaganda material, etc.).
But the most important news was theArticle 28, (which was inspired by the injunction of the American courts), which admitted urgent judicial action, promoted by the unions, to remove anti-union behavior, the existence of which fell within the judge's discretionary assessment.
Since then the Statute has had some legislative changes; some important regulations have been subjected to a repeal referendum; its ''re-foundation'' was awaited in vain in the context of a Statute of works, desired by many (even in these hours) but remained among the ''disappointed hopes''.
Starting with the older modifications, it is modified placement rules, which, in articles 33 and 34 (Title V), recognized the State as the only intermediary between job demand and supply which operated according to the rankings included in numerical lists, while the call by name was allowed in a few and limited cases. A baroque statist approach, unapplied and inefficient, fortunately overwhelmed by European directives.
It was then the turn of the jobs act to change some provisions that have become outdated over time: article 4 (Audiovisual systems) referring to remote controls, challenged by modern technologies; Article 13 (Duties of the worker) making it more flexible ius variandi of the employer to allow for greater mobility of staff in the changing company. Finally, it has changed the article 18 (Reintegration into the workplace) on the subject of the regulation of unjustified dismissals. One could say that this change led to another Thirty Years' War (characterized by strikes, demonstrations, referendums and even some sacrifice of innocent lives).
Today article 18, in its general application, has been largely renewed by law n.92/2012. On the sidelines, dgls n.23 of 2015 introduced a different one regulation of individual dismissal (with some references to collective redundancies) to apply to employees hired from 7 March of that year with an open-ended contract with increasing protection.
Constitutional jurisprudence has already modified an important rule which was the predictability of costs in the event of dismissal deemed unjustified. But the most destabilizing modifications of the law n.300 are derived from the outcome of the abrogative referendums of 1995 concerning article 19 (Constitution of company union representatives) and article 36 (union contributions). After the repeal by referendum, the membership fee collection system it has remained intact in collective bargaining (however through agreements with social security institutions, now incorporated in INPS, it has also been extended to association withholding taxes on pensions).
The changes made to article 19, through the same referendum initiative, remain an unhealed wound and constitute, in the opinion of the writer, a real destabilization of the institutional system envisaged by the Statute. The repealed paragraph referred to the ''associations adhering to the most representative confederations at the national level'': with this provision the ''living law'' had arrived at a real legal system based on the criterion of greater representativeness, as a fact emerging from the actual reality, regardless of the requisites and procedures envisaged by article 39 of the Constitution, a rule that has become obsolete, due to the simple fact that the trade union system has taken a different path from the one envisaged therein.
The mutilation of Article 19 has opened Pandora's box and produced the multiplication of the number of collective agreements, defined as ''pirates'', but applied at the corporate level. A remedy is being sought for this situation, but it is difficult to find one without applying article 39 of the Constitution, however considered inapplicable to the inter-union order established after the war.
