The legal risk that comes with managing personnel
A business that employs staff lives with a constant legal risk. Employment law is dominated by short procedural deadlines, strict formal requirements and a sanctioning system in which a procedural error — a late disciplinary charge, an incomplete statement of reasons for dismissal, failure to follow the trade-union consultation procedure — produces immediate economic consequences: reinstatement, compensatory indemnities, INPS administrative penalties, contribution claims. The case law of recent years, also following the Constitutional Court's rulings on the regimes introduced after Law 92/2012 and Legislative Decree 23/2015, has made the outcome of litigation even more unstable, making the preventive construction of the measure crucial.
The firm assists businesses, professionals acting as employers and small entrepreneurs in the Romagna area with the day-to-day management of employment relationships, with moments of tension (disciplinary charges, dismissals, trade-union disputes) and with litigation before the Tribunal sitting as an employment court. The legal framework is twofold: the rules of the Civil Code and of the Workers' Statute on the individual and collective relationship, and the layers of collective bargaining applicable to the relevant sector.
The work is carried out in liaison with the company's employment consultant, who remains responsible for the administrative and payroll management of the relationship, while the firm handles the legal assessment of each measure, the drafting of documents and, where necessary, the defence in court.
Disciplinary charges and the procedure under Article 7 of Law 300/1970
The disciplinary charge is the moment at which the employer's position undergoes its first test of lawfulness. The Workers' Statute (Law 300/1970, Article 7) requires the prior posting of the disciplinary code, the specificity and timeliness of the charge, observance of a defence period of no less than five days, and the hearing of the employee who requests it. The case law has consolidated a strict interpretation of each of these requirements: a generic charge, a charge brought months after the facts, or the imposition of the sanction before the defence period has expired are all grounds of unlawfulness that also invalidate any subsequent disciplinary dismissal.
The firm's assistance at this stage includes drafting the letter of charge, assessing the proportionality of the sanction to the facts and to the employee's record, managing the hearing and drafting the reasons of the final measure. Where the business intends to charge conduct that has emerged from internal investigations, remote monitoring or reports — areas where the Workers' Statute, the Personal Data Protection Code and the decisions of the Data Protection Authority intersect — the fact-finding stage is structured so that the material gathered is usable in disciplinary and, if necessary, judicial proceedings.
Individual dismissal: just cause, subjective and objective justified reason
Individual dismissal remains the area of greatest risk. The framing of the measure — the characterisation of the facts as just cause (Article 2119 of the Civil Code) or as a subjective justified reason, or as an objective justified reason on production, organisational or post-suppression grounds — determines the sanctioning regime applicable if the dismissal is found unlawful: full reinstatement, attenuated reinstatement, strong or weak indemnity protection, according to the combinations arising from Law 604/1966, Article 18 of the Workers' Statute in its post-Fornero wording and Legislative Decree 23/2015 on the increasing-protection contract, as progressively reshaped by the Constitutional Court.
The firm assists the employer in choosing the ground for dismissal, verifying compliance with the redeployment (repêchage) obligation for the objective justified reason, drafting the dismissal letter, and managing the deadline for the out-of-court challenge (sixty days from receipt) and the subsequent one-hundred-and-eighty-day deadline for filing the claim. In businesses above the statutory thresholds, the prior procedure under Article 7 of Law 604/1966, where still applicable, receives specific drafting attention.
Collective redundancies
Collective redundancies governed by Law 223/1991 require the employer to follow a structured procedure of trade-union information and consultation, joint examination before the territorial labour office, final notice to the competent bodies and the application of agreed selection criteria or, failing agreement, the statutory ones. Compliance with each step is an autonomous condition of lawfulness: an information failure or an uneven application of the selection criteria exposes the business to a finding of unlawfulness with the sanctions of the applicable regime.
The firm assists the business in preparing the notice opening the procedure, managing the trade-union discussions, formalising the agreement or complying with the procedure where no agreement is reached, and in the subsequent stage of implementing the terminations.
Demotion, workplace harassment and the employer's defence
Claims brought by employees for demotion (Article 2103 of the Civil Code, as amended by Legislative Decree 81/2015), mobbing, straining or harassment in the workplace engage the business on a demanding evidentiary front. The employer's defence is built by reconstructing the evolution of the position, the consistency of the service orders, the correspondence between the duties assigned and the contractual grading, and the absence of the intentional and systematic element that the case law requires for mobbing. The documentary rigour of the fact-finding stage — meeting minutes, work e-mails, performance appraisals — is often decisive.
Inspection reports and INPS/INAIL litigation
Inspections by the labour inspectorate, INPS and INAIL close with an assessment report followed, where the outcome is unfavourable to the business, by a debit notice or a penalty measure. The system of remedies runs on short deadlines: the assessment notice for monetary claims, the appeal to the Regional Committee for employment relationships, the administrative appeal to INPS, the opposition under Article 24 of Legislative Decree 46/1999 before the Tribunal, and the challenge to the collection notice.
The firm assists the employer in the adversarial exchange during the inspection, in drafting administrative appeals and in judicial opposition, with particular attention to the recurrent issues — classification of the relationship, minimum contributions, regularity of the insurance positions of collaborators — and to the sanctioning aspects of workplace safety (Legislative Decree 81/2008), which frequently entail criminal liability for the employer and its delegates.
Crisis-management tools: wage-support schemes, solidarity funds, NASpI
Managing situations of crisis or suspension of activity requires the activation of the wage-support schemes under Legislative Decree 148/2015 and subsequent amendments: ordinary, extraordinary and derogation wage-guarantee funds, the wage-integration allowance paid by the solidarity funds, and solidarity contracts. The trade-union consultation procedures, the deadlines for filing applications and the access requirements vary according to the scheme and the size of the business. The firm assists the company, in liaison with its employment consultant, in setting up the procedure correctly and in handling any litigation brought by employees against the company's suspension decisions.
Transfer of business (Article 2112 of the Civil Code)
The transfer of a business or business unit entails, by express provision of Article 2112 of the Civil Code, the continuity of the employment relationships with the transferee and the joint and several liability of transferor and transferee for the claims accrued by the employee. The trade-union information and consultation procedure under Article 47 of Law 428/1990, any joint examination and the definition of the perimeter of the transferred unit are matters in which preventive advice prevents disputes which, arising after the transaction, affect its economic outcome.
Whistleblowing (Legislative Decree 24/2023)
Businesses above the statutory thresholds are required to set up the internal reporting channels governed by Legislative Decree 24/2023, with reinforced protection for the reporting person and a sanctioning regime for retaliation. The firm assists with the design of the internal procedure, the drafting of the company policy, the handling of the reports received and any ensuing disciplinary stages, with particular attention to coordination with the rules on personal-data protection and with the corporate-liability system under Legislative Decree 231/2001.
The firm's method
The first meeting is devoted to framing the case and analysing the contractual and service documentation. On that basis the firm prepares a written estimate of the professional activity pursuant to Article 13 of Law 247/2012 (L. 247/2012).
The firm is a sole practice: the client deals directly with the principal. In employment matters, coordination with the company's employment consultant is continuous: the legal assessment of the measure and its drafting remain with the lawyer, while the administrative management of the relationship remains with the consultant. The assessment of alternatives to litigation — settlement, conciliation before the trade unions or the labour inspectorate, single-conciliator proceedings — is a constitutive part of the advice, not a fallback after the claim has been filed.
Related areas
- Tax law and tax litigation — for contribution issues and for inspections with tax implications.
- Administrative law and litigation against public authorities — for penalties imposed by the National Labour Inspectorate and its territorial bodies.
For a first discussion
For a first discussion of your situation you may message us on WhatsApp or use the contact form. The first meeting is intended to frame the case and to define — where appropriate — a written estimate of the activity pursuant to Article 13 of Law 247/2012.