Without fanfare and, unfortunately, without effective parliamentary reactions, a bill (1067-b) is about to be approved in the Senate which, in fact, liquidates the "just cause" in individual dismissals, dealing a mortal blow to that article 18 of the Workers' Statute which represents the last defense against employers' abuses in labor conflicts.
Already in the past, repeatedly, but almost alone, we have denounced the extreme gravity of the project through which collective agreements, laws to protect the weaker party and the very function of the judiciary are reduced to dust in one fell swoop. The juridical architecture that leads to this terrifying outcome is based on the combined provision of two articles, 32, which intervenes on the labor process and on the role of the judge; and 33 which introduces "arbitration". To understand what it actually is, it should be remembered that the notorious law 30 had foreseen the possibility that, in activating an employment relationship, the two interested parties could "certify", in agreement with each other and according to a defined practice, conditions in whole or in part derogating from collective agreements and current legislation. It is evident to anyone that the signing of similar agreements can only be the result of blackmail. Since only the extreme need to work can induce a person in possession of his/her intellectual faculties to accept jugulatory clauses, pejorative of the normative or retributive conditions of his/her performance, renunciations to which he would never, reasonably, bend unless forced by a state of necessity. The rule therefore serves to give legal force, formal legitimacy to the law of the strongest, overturning a fixed point of Italian labor law, according to which the weakest subject, the worker, must not be placed in a position to succumb due to his own weakness. For this reason, the law had hitherto foreseen that there were "unavailable rights", that is to say inalienable, even by those who are their beneficiaries. To complete the crime and make this healthy and democratic principle inoperative, however, it was necessary to introduce another, decisive element. It was necessary to prevent the judge from intervening ex post, in the face of a dispute brought by the worker when the latter, because he was more free to dispose of himself, or because he resigned, intended to obtain justice, albeit belatedly.
Here then is the new rule that closes the circle, the deadbolt that nullifies any remedial intent: «In qualifying the employment contract and in interpreting the relative clauses, the judge cannot deviate from the assessments of the parties, expressed in the certification of the employment contracts (...) except in the case of erroneous qualification of the contract, defects in the consent or discrepancy between the certified negotiating program and its subsequent implementation». Repetitive and cloying prose, but with an unmistakable meaning
