The Ilva case is the most recent example of that iconoclastic fury which in Italy permeates certain magistrates, both civil and criminal, when they find themselves facing questions relating to companies, in particular large industrial groups, which may have, under the effect of their decisions, with strong economic, social, political or trade union implications.
The size of the decision-making space and the full autonomy of the judge, which are certainly fundamental values of our democratic life, also determine the most absolute variability in economic-industrial and labor matters and reduce certainty in the application of the law.
Many observers have underlined that the coexistence over time of different and conflicting interpretations adopted by this or that judge (think only of article 18) calls into question the same law and determines an unacceptable structural unpredictability.
The serious situation of uncertainty in the application of the law, which today has even resulted in a very harsh clash between the judiciary and the Government with ILVA, constitutes a further heavy penalty for Italian companies which every day on international markets are confronted with fierce competitors and much less constrained in their operations.
Businesses, like all citizens, need to know the rules of the game with certainty, but this is not always the case.
Let's take the case of those sentences which established that in the metal-mechanical companies associated with Federmeccanica, the national contract signed by Fim-Cisl and Uilm-Uil on the basis of the renewed inter-confederation rules on bargaining levels cannot be applied to Fiom-Cgil members. and instead the previous national contract of 2008 also signed by Fiom should be applied.
This meant that for three years, from 2009 to 2012, two different national contracts existed in the same company and, therefore, workers who, for the same job, could have different economic and regulatory treatments. A difficult situation to manage, moreover, with the risk of not being completely overcome, given that the new national contract for metalworkers in force since January of this year, signed by Federmeccanica and Fim and Uilm, is contested by Fiom.
Even more sensational is the case of Fiat which in the last two years has been the subject of an unprecedented judicial campaign.
After the Pomigliano agreement, approved by the majority of workers, became the basis for the new Labor Contract applied to all Fiat workers to replace the CCNL for metalworkers, Fiom started a complex legal dispute against the company ( more than sixty complaints for anti-union activity pursuant to Article 28 of the Workers' Statute), qualifying the new Fiat Employment Contract, which it did not sign, as extortionate, contrary to the Constitution and even harmful to the dignity of workers.
Also in the examination of this avalanche of appeals there was no lack of singular pronouncements, such as to confirm that it is always a gamble in our country to do business without a reasonable margin of not incurring in some judicial measure, most of the time of a "clear" orientation.
Take, for example, the question of trade union representation in the company. The provision of the Workers' Statute, art.9, on union representation, as desired by the sovereign people in the 1995 referendum, is clearly literal: company union representatives can only be established within union associations that have signed collective work applied in the production unit.
Fiom-Cgil, having not signed the collective labor agreement applied to all Fiat employees, found itself in the legal position of not being able to appoint its own representatives within the factories.
However, this did not prevent it from unleashing a legal battle against all the Fiat companies, also wanting the right to set up its own union representatives to be recognized.
In order to support the positions of Fiom, some magistrates, in Turin as in Modena or Melfi, have considered that, instead of deciding, as done by other magistrates, by applying the norm of art. 19 in its simple and linear scope, the story deserved the involvement of the Constitutional Court. It is a pity that on the grounds of unconstitutionality of art. 19 raised by these judges, the Constitutional Court has already expressed, since 1995, in two sentences its assessment of the full legitimacy of the current text of art. 19.
In essence, the Constitutional Court is again referred to the question only because it is requested by a judicial-union board in the name of an alleged change in the scenario of union relations deriving from the Fiat case (all the dismissal orders are based on this factual premise) , almost as if the constitutionality of a law, intended to regulate trade union representation in tens of thousands of companies and millions of workers, could be measured against a clash – above all conjunctural and reversible – which concerns a single company (Fiat), a single union (Fiom), a single category (metalworkers) and a few hundred workers (Fiat employees registered with Fiom).
These are just a few examples that lead to one disheartening conclusion: doing business in Italy is much more complicated and the possibility of encountering obstacles is much higher than in other countries.
To encourage economic growth, the recovery of investments and employment, one of the tasks of the next Government can therefore only be to provide certainty on the application and interpretation of the law, starting with those on the labor market and on bargaining.
