On this day, exactly fifty years ago, the Chamber of Deputies definitively approved law no. 300/1970, which went down in the history of civil and social relations and industrial relations, under the name of Statute of workers.
The Statute had begun the legislative process in the Senate (for the record, the Upper House, which risked being abolished to ''simplify the institutions',' has always been in republican Italy the main protagonist in passing the most significant). The measure was definitively approved by the Chamber with 217 votes in favor (the centre-left majority – DC, PSI and PSDI unified in the PSU, PRI – with the addition of the PLI, at the time in opposition); PCI, PSIUP and MSI opted for abstention and there were ten votes against, coming from who knows not. Being the quorum of the absolute majority in the House of 316 votes, the relative majority that still allowed the approval of the law, was made possible by the abstention of the oppositions, starting from the most consistent groups of the left.
The outcome of the vote demonstrates that – in the debate that prepared and accompanied the legislative process of a law that in future decades was sanctified precisely by the left and by trade union organizations – there were differences of approach. A part of the left didn't welcome the innovative imprint of legislation supporting trade union organisations. Above all the CGIL, under the influence of the theories of the labor lawyers of the school of "constitutionalists" of Ugo Natoli (founder of the historic Labor Law Review, close to the Confederation of Corso d'Italia), believed that they should be recognized the rights of workers in the workplace, not only trade union rights, but also political ones. To them Gino Giugni who had been the main protagonist of the initiative ever since the socialist minister Giacomo Brodolini had appointed him, before he died in July 1969, president of a commission charged with preparing a text.
Then it was the Christian Democrat Carlo Donat Cattin, who succeeded Brodolini, to complete the projectalbeit with the determined assistance of Gino Giugni, who had been reconfirmed by Donat Cattin as head of the Legislative Office of the Dicastery.
We recall a critical appreciation by Giugni towards the requests of those who insisted on including the so-called political rights of workers in the article: "Everyone is free to read the newspaper they want, but cannot do so during working hours“. It is true that as regards ''Title II Of trade union freedoms'', law n.300 in practice implemented what had been won by the metalworkers' federations in the historic contract renewal of 1969, in full ''warm autumn'' (even if the subscription took place a few days before Christmas). And this part of the law was the heart of the promotional legislation, as the rights were recognized in general to external trade union organizations (right of assembly during working hours, premises, billboards, distribution of trade union material throughout the company, contributions trade unions, access to patronage, leave and permits for union leaders, etc.) to the workplace and through this intermediation, fell on the workers. The prize piece of the promotional legislation was found in Article 28 which attributed to the union the appeal to the judge to request the cessation of an anti-union behavior by the employer. But the banner of the Statute was for decades Article 18 “reintegration into the workplace'”, which introduced, generally speaking, except in small businesses, a law of effective protection in the event of dismissal judged to be illegitimate.
To change this article, a sort of civil war was fought, through referendums with abrogation or extension effect, ''generalissimi'' strikes, epochal demonstrations, while some innocent victims ended up on the pavement riddled with gunshots. Today the same article was amended in the law n.92 of 2012. Then with the legislative decree n. 23 of 2015 (within the framework of the jobs act) a different regime was introduced in the matter of unlawful dismissal, parallel and not a substitute for the general regulation of article 18 as amended, but more flexible: the permanent employment contract with increasing protections, which can only be applied to those hired after 7 March 2015.
Wanting to deepen the discussion with intellectual honesty, some changes could be shared among all interested parties, in addition to the important ones already made: to article 4 on audiovisual controls, to article 13 regarding the liberalization of certain criteria of the exercise of the ius variandi and their effects. But the most radical change was made - by referendum - to Article 19. The result was theto demolish the criteria around which the trade union system had found a substantial balance and a legal profile, accompanied by the support of the law, to the major issues of representation and representativeness, outside of what was provided for by article 39 of the Constitution.
In practice, it was a tautology: the premise recognized the right to establish RSA to the organizations signing the contracts as more representative. But what were the criteria that gave the right to the attribution of greater representativeness? It was sufficient for those union associations to stipulate collective agreements. In short: I am a union more representative because I subscribe to collective agreements, but I can do so precisely because I am more representative. We are still stuck at this point, except for the introduction of another adverb of way to define representativeness: comparatively. And it is difficult to get out of it without going back to the origins: to apply article 39 of the Constitution after having resurrected it from the grave, thus bringing the industrial relations structure back decades.
