Of Luciano Gallino – the Republic. The comments on article 8 of the decree on the financial maneuver mostly insisted on the risk that it facilitates dismissals, effectively making article 18 of the Workers' Statute ineffective when "specific agreements" are reached between unions and companies. It was certainly useful to draw attention first of all to this risk, which is of crucial importance for workers. However, no less attention should be paid to other parts of article 8 which suggest a serious worsening of the working conditions of anyone who has or wants to be employed by a company.
So let's see what could happen to a worker (or female worker) who is already employed in a company, or is negotiating his or her own recruitment, where workers' associations representative on a national or territorial level have signed the "specific agreements" with that company provided for in article 8. In the first place, the interested party should know that – if there have been agreements on the matter – his every movement at work will be monitored instant by instant by an audiovisual system. Article 4 of the Workers' Statute would prohibit it, but article 8 of the decree allows for derogation from it. Would that worker perhaps appreciate a schedule of around 40 hours? Get it out of your head. By virtue of another "specific agreement", within that company normal working hours are 60 hours, the maximum limit set by a directive of the European Commission, a limit which for particular jobs can rise to 65; however, by virtue of the same agreement, it could drop to 20 in a few months. Would you like to be classified as a skilled worker, as it has been for so many years? Another agreement is brought to his attention, according to which that company can attribute the qualification of general worker to a specialist: take it or leave it. It may also happen, after some time, that the company proposes to convert the permanent employment contract into a collaborator's contract with a renewable project, if the company likes it, of three months in three months. A contract thanks to which he would find himself working as a self-employed person - such as project collaborators - who must perform his duties with all the constraints of an employee, starting from the timetable and audiovisual controls, but without benefiting from benefits that they have, such as having paid holidays under contract.
The work situations indicated above are not gratuitous inferences. If the words of the decree make sense, they are all situations made materially and immediately possible, in case the article
