The civil servant caught in flagrante delicto must be suspended from work in 48 hours. This is one of the qualifying points introduced by recent legislative decrees reform of the Public Administration launched by the Government. The tool, along with others, should make life more difficult for the so-called card smarts. Yet, things are not as simple as we would have you believe. It is not enough to catch the public employee in the act of committing a crime to automatically trigger the law on dismissal that has just been passed.
In this case it comes into play the Workers' Statute, and in particular the article 4 recently rewritten by the Jobs Act, where regulates remote verification – i.e. with a video surveillance system, commonly used as a useful tool for certifying the fragrance of a crime – of the conduct of the employee. Precisely in relation to the use of video surveillance tools, in the procedural and judicial phase we could have opposite results with respect to the purposes of the regulations that have just been passed.
It has already happened in various procedural proceedings that, in the face of extensive video documentation which unequivocally attested to the illicit behavior of the worker, it was not possible to be dismissed. There are many striking examples: think of the workers they employed hands in passengers' suitcases at airports, or to workers who during their illness they go for runs and marathons, or to employees who they clock in and go shopping. Unequivocally documented offenses with the use of video surveillance cameras and that they did not lead to the dismissal of the employee. The procedural truth does not always allow the declaration of legitimacy of the dismissal.
Why? There are various reasons that may invalidate the dismissal provision despite the flagrante delicto proven with the use of video surveillance cameras. For example, the evidence collected cannot be used in the trial because collected in violation of the law current. Then there are organizational, managerial and economic issues relating to the costs of applying controls such as those in the San Remo case.
The real issue, if we want to make the contrasting rules effective, is not the time necessary for the disciplinary procedure, but the simplification of the methods of obtaining information and evidence aimed at ascertaining any unlawful behavior by the employee. Until action is taken in this sense, any norm of tightening of the measures will fade in front of the procedural wall.
