Leading Italian labor law expert speaks at Penn State Law

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Maurizio Del Conte, professor of law at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, recently visited Penn State to meet with students and faculty members and address classes across the University that cover labor law.

In Penn State Law professor Michael Foreman’s Employment Discrimination class, Del Conte, who was recently tasked by Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to rewrite parts of Italy’s labor law, discussed differences between the Italian and U.S. labor law systems. He said the most dramatic difference between the two systems is that, in the U.S., employers can terminate employees at-will, whereas Italy maintains the concept that employees own their jobs, like property, and can only be fired for just cause.

“An employee can only be fired in very specific cases,” Del Conte said. “If an employee steals from the company, assaults or harasses the boss, then the employee can be fired.”

Because of this job protection, Italy does not have a very strong legislation protecting employee discrimination. The law already protects the employee’s job, so such legislation is much less necessary than in the U.S., according to Del Conte.

“It’s difficult to prove discrimination,” he said. “It’s easier to use the other legal tools for job protection to get the desired result of getting re-hired and receiving lost wages.”

Italy has no culture of punitive damages, Del Conte said, another difference from U.S. labor law.  In the U.S., the law punishes behavior that the courts find to be unfair, and for employment discrimination, the punishment tends to be much heavier than in Italy. Italian labor law typically only corrects the wrongful termination.

“If an Italian employee has been fired unfairly, the main way to repair the damage is reinstatement of employment,” he said. “This is the golden rule of our system.”

One of the ways Del Conte is working to reform Italian labor laws is to shift from the reinstatement to a monetary compensation in cases of economic dismissals, such as when an organization closes an office or lays off employees for economic reasons.

Additionally, Del Conte said Italian labor laws are undergoing reform to repair the issue of Italy’s dual system of workers: traditional employees and independent contractors. The job protection laws protect the traditional workers, those who own their jobs, while the independent contractors have virtually no protection. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the majority of the labor force is independent contractors, according to Del Conte.

“We are trying to reshape the level of protection, by reducing the protection of the traditional workers and stimulating employers to offer a standard contract,” he said. “In this way, we can stimulate the entrance into the system of the independent contractors.”

In addition to Foreman’s class, Del Conte spoke in Penn State Law professor David Flatto’s Employment Relationship class and addressed students in Penn State’ School of Labor & Employment Relations.

Del Conte is Director of the Research Unit on Law and Economics Studies at Bocconi University and member of the Center on International Markets, Money and Regulation Board. His recent publications focus on termination of employment contracts, trade unions’ rights and collective bargaining, alternative dispute resolution, and workplace privacy.