After the reform of Article 18, most labor lawsuits 'will lead to compensation rather than reinstatement'. This is the prediction of Peter Ichino, senator of the Democratic Party, who spoke today in Rome during a conference entitled "Labour reform: what is there, what is missing, lights and shadows", organized in collaboration with the law firm LabLaw.
"Those who argue that not much has changed with the labor reform - explained Ichino - believe that the possibility given to the judge to order reinstatement for economic dismissals, given the conduct of our labor judges, will lead companies to have to deal still very often with the 'reintegration risk'. Actually, the margin of discretion left to the judges is not wide at all".
The new article 18 – continued the senator – “provides for mandatory reintegration only in cases where an absolute right of the person is at stake (freedom, moral dignity, honor…)”. Namely for discriminatory dismissals. As for disciplinary reasons, the return of the job is instead "precluded when the judge has to assess the entity of the fact that caused the dismissal according to his description". In those cases, when the existence of the fact is peaceful, "only compensation is possible". The reinstatement, in fact, takes place only "when the fact does not exist".
Then there is another distinction to take into account: while disciplinary dismissals are linked to an alleged lack of the worker that occurred in the past, those for economic reasons refer to a future event, "that is, the expectation of a loss linked to the continuation of the relationship", Ichino said again. The difficulty of the employer in demonstrating the legitimacy of something that has yet to occur is evident. For this reason, according to the Pd senator, the parties will be led to a more peaceful resolution of the disputes.
