After eight years, the renewal of the Collective Economic Agreement for agents and trade representatives in the industrial sectors was signed last Wednesday 30 July between the trade unions of the autonomous Confederations and Federations and the employers' associations of Confindustria and Confcooperative and of cooperation.
Agents and representatives have always been among the archetypes of self-employed and independent workers as, in accordance with articles 1742 and 1752 of the civil code, the commercial agent is a person permanently appointed by one or more companies to promote the conclusion of contracts in a given area, while the representative can conclude contracts directly in the name of the companies from which he received the assignment.
The signed agreement replaces the one dated March 20, 2002, which expired on March 31, 2005, which was followed by tacit renewals from year to year, and introduces the important novelty of the redefinition of the overall indemnity discipline for the dissolution of the agency contract.
In addition to the termination indemnity (managed by the FIRR: Fund for termination indemnity, an institution similar to the employee severance indemnity), and the supplementary customer indemnity, the so-called "meritocratic indemnity" is now also provided ”.
The agreement on the introduction of this last indemnity, due to the agent only in the event of an increase in customers and/or turnover, is aimed at definitively settling the dispute which, in recent years, has characterized the quantification of the economic amounts to be disburse for the termination of the agency contract.
The other relevant aspect of the agreement is the confirmation of the regulation of unilateral changes in the area (territory, customers and products) which - among other things - are divided more clearly into changes of "slight entity" (up to 5% of the value), of "medium size" (over 5% and up to 15% of the value) and of "significant size" (more than 15% of the value).
Precisely to contain the litigation, including judicial, of this particular category of self-employed workers, the parties signatory to the agreement finally agreed on the usefulness and importance of out-of-court conciliation procedures, in relation to the provisions of articles 410 and following of the code of civil procedure and the provisions in force on the subject, which specify the rules concerning the settlement of disputes pursuant to art. 409 cpc
In this sense, the parties have therefore agreed to set up a commission to define, with a specific regulation, a specific conciliation procedure, which must be dismissed within 6 months of the signing of today's agreement.
The new collective agreement will be effective from 1 September 2014, with the exception of the new discipline on merit-based compensation, which, according to the provisions of the specific transitional rule, will become fully operational from 1 January 2016.
