Government approves legislative decree transposing EU Directive on part-time work

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On 28 January 2000, the Italian Council of Ministers definitively approved a legislative decree which sets out new regulations on part-time work in application of EU Directive 97/81/EC. Among the most important innovations are a more flexible use of part-time work and the introduction of "extra hours" for part-timers. According to the government, the new rules, which also include a series of incentives, should help create around 100,000 new jobs. The Confindustria employers' confederation has criticised the new regulations, which it considers to be too rigid. The trade unions, by contrast, appear to be substantially satisfied.

On 28 January 2000, Italy's Council of Ministers definitively approved a legislative decree reforming the rules on part-time work. The decree introduces a new regime which regulates part-time work, thereby implementing EU Directive 97/81/EC on part-time work (EU9706131F) and repealing previous legislation. At the press conference held after the Council of Ministers had given its approval, the Minister of Labour, Cesare Salvi, presented the new regulations, stating that they were intended to implement the EU Directive, eliminate the legal uncertainties and organisational difficulties that had characterised part-time work, and introduce a set of incentives which, in the government's view, should help create 100,000 new jobs. An important purpose of the new rules, in fact, is to encourage the use of part-time in order to foster employment creation. In recent years, the number of part-time work contracts has increased in Italy, but it is still below that of other European countries. Mr Salvi declared that, with a view to encouraging the use of part-time contracts, "account has been taken of both the need to introduce new elements of flexibility in the use of this form of employment, and the necessity to avoid making flexibility coincide with precariousness".

The new rules on part-time work

The main points of the legislative decree establishing the new rules on part-time work are the following:

1. part-time work is an employment relationship in which an individual contract stipulates fewer working hours than the legal norm (now set at 40 per week) or fewer than those established by the collective agreement applied by the firm. Part-time work may be "horizontal" (where the hours are reduced on a daily basis) or "vertical" (where the work is executed full-time, but only in certain fixed periods during the week, month or year). Collective bargaining may permit the combination of vertical and horizontal part-time work;

2. part-time work contracts must be set out in written form, and they must state the distribution of working hours with reference to the day, week, month or year;

3. the decree establishes the principle of "non-discrimination" between part-time and full-time workers. In particular, no differences between the two categories are permitted as regards matters such as trade union rights, pay, annual holidays, parental leave, protection against workplace accidents and occupational illness, and access to company training schemes;

4. the decree repeals the law which allowed collective bargaining to set limits on the proportion of part-time workers to the full-time workforce. If company-level trade union representatives are present in a firm, the employer is obliged to inform them once a year about the number of part-time recruitments, the type of part-time work, and the level of extra hours (ie hours worked within the statutory maximum but above the collectively agreed norm);

5. the decree lifts the ban on extra hours and overtime for part-timers. Fixing the limits on extra hours is left to collective bargaining. In particular, the collective agreements applied in a company should state the maximum amount of extra hours that can be undertaken in the course of the year and in a single working day, as well as the objective reasons which justify the request for extra work. While awaiting collective bargaining rules on this matter, the law sets a limit on additional hours of 10% of weekly part-time working hours, calculated over a period not in excess of a month and usable over more than one week. Extra work must always be voluntary, and refusal to perform it cannot be considered grounds for either disciplinary measures or for dismissal for justified reason;

6. extra hours are paid at the same rate as ordinary hours. However, if they exceed the limit established by the law or by collective bargaining, a 50% premium is paid. If extra work proves not to be occasional, the worker concerned is entitled to obtain, wholly or partly, a proportional increase in his or her normal working hours;

7. overtime is allowed in the case of vertical part-time work in relation to the days worked. It is regulated by the legal and collective bargaining rules which apply to full-time work, with the quarterly and annual limits on overtime working proportionally adjusted to the individual working hours;

8. collective agreements may introduce the possibility of making the distribution of work laid down in the individual employment contract flexible, stating the circumstances in which an employer may alter the distribution of the work schedule and establishing an allowance for the worker. In these cases, the worker must be given at least 10 days' notice. The willingness of the worker to accept a flexible distribution of his or her working hours must be stated in writing. The worker may withdraw this assent for a) family reasons, b) health reasons certified by the public health service, or c) because she or he has to work in another job, including self-employment. Collective bargaining may add the grounds of study or training to this list. In no case may refusal to provide written agreement or withdrawal of assent constitute grounds for justified dismissal;

9. extra hours and overtime, as well as the flexible distribution of working hours, are permitted only in the case of open-ended employment contracts or of temporary substitutions. The collective agreements applied in the company may extend this provision to other types of fixed-term employment;

10. incentives are offered to promote the use of part-time contracts. A total of ITL 600 billion has been earmarked to finance over three years relief on the social security contributions paid by employers in respect of part-time permanent recruitments which, in the course of 2000, give rise to an increase in employment; and

11. part-time workers have precedence when applying for full-time job vacancies with their employer involving the same tasks as they already perform. Likewise, in the case of part-time vacancies, employees already working full-time may ask to change their employment relationship into a part-time arrangement.

The reactions of the social partners

Confindustria, the major Italian employers' organisation, has been highly critical of the contents of the legislative decree on part-time work, declaring that it considers that the government's decree has not complied with the provisions of the EU Directive. In fact, Confindustria claims, the new rules contravene the principle of "non-discrimination", because they introduce aspects that make part-time work less attractive than full-time employment, due firstly to the allegedly excessively restrictive constraints imposed on extra hours, and secondly to the perceived disproportionate charges levied on extra hours worked in excess of limits set by law and collective bargaining. Moreover, in Confindustria's view, this latter point, as it imposes by law a pay premium of 50%, removes a key element of the regulation of part-time work from collective bargaining and violates the principle of the parties' autonomy.

The trade unions appear substantially satisfied with the new rules, although they have stated, especially Cisl, that rules could have been introduced which gave more significant and clearer incentives for the growth of part-time work.

Commentary

The most important feature of the legislative decree on part-time work is the effort to support the diffusion of this kind of employment relationship, in order to foster the creation of new jobs. In this sense, the main point of reference may be the Netherlands, where more than a third of workers have a part-time job. In Italy, even if it has grown during recent years, the use of part-time work remains moderate: in October 1999, its share of total employment was 8.7%, while the European mean in 1998 was 17.4%.

The legislative decree attempts to make the use of part-time work more flexible, addressing one of the main reasons for its limited diffusion in Italy. The "rigidities" of the former legislation were due to the wish to guarantee the "protection" of workers against a kind of employment contract which was considered with suspicion. Now, many constraints have been abolished. At the same time, however, the regulation of flexibility is left to collective bargaining, which may act with great autonomy on all aspects of part-time flexibility, from extra hours to the variable distribution of working hours. Moreover, industry-wide collective agreements are given a degree of predominance by the rules assigning to sectoral bargaining the definition of the maximum number of extra hours per year, and by those which establish that company-level bargaining on part-time work should take place with the assistance of the trade union organisations which signed the sectoral collective agreement applied in the company.

In practice, the possibility of introducing more flexible part-time work is restricted to firms which apply collective agreements (though it is possible that the interpretation of this point will be controversial). In a way, it can be said that worker "protection", no longer guaranteed by law, is now delegated to collective bargaining. This point of view was endorsed by the Minister of Labour, when he presented the legislative decree.

This solution, on one side, corresponds to "an" objective of promoting collective bargaining, which may be important because the sectors where the potential growth of part-time work is greatest, that is services, are also those where the presence of trade unions and collective bargaining is often low. On the other side, the priority given to sectoral agreements conforms to the two-level industrial relations structure established by the July 1993 intersectoral tripartite agreement (IT9803223F).

However, it is not clear whether the new rules will support an actual growth in part-time work. Confindustria seems to believe that they are not sufficient. In any case, a significant spread of part-time work would probably need a thorough transformation of attitudes about this kind of employment arrangement, on the part both of employers and workers, and also important changes in work organisation patterns (Roberto Pedersini, Fondazione Regionale Pietro Seveso).