Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the main measures in the field of employment have concerned the issue of social measures and the stop of dismissals. In reading the draft of the 2021 Budget Law drawn up by the Italian Senate, it seems predictable that 2021 will also see new .
These issues are inevitably linked, because of in view of the granting of a further 12 weeks of social measures, the stop of dismissals will also be extended until 31st March 2021, so thereby there will be:
prohibition of individual dismissals on justified grounds.
prohibition of collective redundancies.
suspension of ongoing dismissal procedures.
The assumption behind the extension of the stop of dismissal seems to be exactly based on the possibility to activate the social shock absorbers provided by Italian law (i.e. CIGO, CIGS, CIGD, FIS) for employees: those allow the employee to keep his job and – on the other hand - the employer to be assisted by the State in paying his employee’ remuneration.
However, nowhere in the Law it’s written something about the case where the employer didn’t use or activate the social shock absorbers but considers that there is a justified grounds for dismissal of one of his employees: by the way, just because of the silence of the Law, it could be inadvisable activate dismissal procedures or proceding with ongoing dismissal procedures during the state of emergency.
Until today, from the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, a several legal provisions have imposed a stop to new and ongoing dismissal procedures based on justified grounds: from the “Cura Italia” Decree (cfr. Art. 46 of Decree-Law No. 18/2020), to the “Rilancio” Decree (Decree-Law No. 34/2020) to the “Rilancio 2” Decree (former August Decree Law No. 104/2020) and up to the issuance of the “Ristori” Decree (Decree-Law No. 137/2020 of 28 October 2020).
Therefore, until 31 March 2021, employers can’t:
start the collective dismissal procedure provided for Law no. 221/1991.
start the dismissal on justified grounds procedure provided for Article 3 of Law no. 604/1996.
However, there are also cases in which the prohibition shall not apply:
definitive termination of the undertaking's activity, resulting from the liquidation of the company without any continuation, even partial, of the activity;
bankruptcy, without provisional operation of the undertaking, or its cessation is ordered;
company collective agreement entered by the most representative trade unions at national level, as an incentive to terminate the employment relationship.
In addition, there will remain outside the block dismissal for misconduct and dismissals for justified subjective reasons, including a disciplinary dismissal, as well as dismissals for reaching the maximum age limit for receiving the old-age pension.
The exclusion also includes:
redundancies for use of the quota 100 pension;
redundancies due to exceeding of the compulsory retirement period;
dismissals of domestic employees’, since in such cases the termination is ad nutum.
The foregoing is in the draft of 2021 Budget Law; we just have to wait for the end of the year and for any further new and final measures on the issue of dismissals.