One of the most important and undoubtedly the most discussed chapters of the Jobs Act concerns the application of the new rules of article 18 of the Workers' Statute, currently valid for private workers, to public employees. According to the calculations of the Study Foundation of the National Council of Labor Consultants, in the event that the new rules established by the labor reform approved by the Renzi government were also extended to state workers, the savings would be very substantial.
Analyzing the flows of the year 2014 on the basis of the mandatory communications disseminated by the Ministry of Labour, it is discovered that in just twelve months more than 10 million employment relationships between subordinates and coordinated and continuous collaborations are interrupted in the private sector. Most of the interruptions concern fixed-term workers who end their activity due to the natural expiry of the contractual terms.
As far as layoffs are concerned, however, in 2014 there were around 1 million. Of these, 828 thousand deriving from an economic dismissal, while 89 thousand for disciplinary reasons (just cause or justified subjective reason), a figure that represents 8% of the total.
Based on the calculations of the Study Foundation of the National Council of Labor Consultants, applying on paper the same percentages also to the 3 million and 233 thousand workers in the public sector, without the protections guaranteed by the "old" article 18, the employees of the Public Administration potentially disciplinary cases would amount to 21.661.
Considering that each state worker costs an average of 48.936 euros a year, extending Article 18 to the public sector would potentially save more than a billion euros a year.
