On Sunday, May 26, consultations will take place not only for the election of European Parliament but also to renew over 3000 municipal councils.
In Piedmont there will be a real election day: in addition to the European elections, regional and municipal elections will take place in many cities, including the capitals of Vercelli, Biella and Verbania.
In addition to the citizens who vote, this electoral round will therefore involve tens of thousands of citizens also as Presidents, tellers and list representatives in the polling stations.
In this regard, it is worth recalling the current legislation on paid leave in favor of workers who perform public functions at polling stations as they have the right to be absent from work for the entire period corresponding to the duration of the operations, generally from Saturday to Monday, but which can also override Tuesday if of ballots involve multiple elections.
In the next round of elections, in many polling stations, the ballots will probably continue on Tuesday as well, since, once the counting of the ballots for the European elections has ended on Sunday night, the subsequent operations for the other regional and/or municipal elections will begin after 14 pm on Monday, obviously to avoid exhausting "marathons".
For working days, Mondays and possibly Tuesdays but also Saturdays and Sundays, if the worker would have been on duty on a multi-week schedule, the same has the right to benefit from the same economic and regulatory treatment that would have been due in the event of effective working activity.
Public holidays, such as Sundays, or non-working days, such as Saturdays, in the event that working hours are from Monday to Friday, must be paid with the same number of shares of normal pay, or with the alternative of a compensatory rest , the so-called “election holidaysadditional.
Furthermore, no increase is due in addition to the normal daily wages, since the worker, for the service performed at the polling station, also receives the remuneration established by law, if President, secretary or scrutineer.
However, the aforementioned remuneration is not due to list representatives and their deputies, even though they believe they receive particular gratification in the context of their activity in the political groups represented.
Today the office of the list representative and his alternate, who exercises his functions only in the event of the effective representative's temporary absence from the seat, has in fact become an opportunity, given the proliferation of electoral lists, to enjoy three days of additional paid holidays to a large audience of friends, neighbors and customers: each list, even if marginal, present in a polling station, can be represented by two of its trustees, the permanent and the alternate, provided that they are public or private employees, and the days of paid electoral leave are paid by the employer Work.
Otherwise it would not be possible to explain theabsenteeism for electoral permits of list representatives which reaches very high levels in the electoral rounds both among workers in public services and in industry.
A phenomenon which in the industrial sector can today be partially mitigated by the negative economic situation: the rules which provide for the right of the worker to be absent from work for the period of the electoral operations and the relative economic treatment in fact presuppose that the employment relationship is in place and that the work must be carried out.
However, this condition does not arise when a period of suspension from work has already been planned and communicated in advance according to the usual trade union procedures, with intervention by the redundancy fund, which also includes election days.
In this case the company is not required to pay any amount for non-working days and holidays or for those that would have been worked, while for the period relating to electoral operations the worker will in any case be entitled to receive wage integration treatment as the INPS does not equate the activity performed at the seats.
