Following the proposal of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi filed on March 12, 2014 regarding changes to the fixed-term contract and apprenticeship contract, below is a summary of the Decree Law no. 34 of March 20, 2014 containing “Urgent measures to promote increased employment and decrease the burdens on businesses”.
The key changes to the fixed-term contract can be summarized as follows:
- Elimination of causality: the affixing of the term is no longer subject to technical, production, organization or replacement reasons;
- Duration of the contract without causality: the term has been raised from 12 to 36 months, inclusive of any extension (for the performance of any task);
- Extensions: it is now possible to have a maximum of 8 extensions of the contract term, provided that they relate to the same job;
- Warning With the new framework, it will be possible to have 8 extensions of the original contract, for a period of 4 months each, with a maximum limit of 36 months. [9 (1 term of contract + 8 extensions) X 4 = 36]
- Warning Relation to same job: it is important to emphasize that the decree gives the possibility of extending the deadline ONLY for the activities included under the first contract.
- Limit quantity: the total number of fixed-term contracts cannot exceed the limit of 20% of the total workforce, except in the cases provided for in Article 10 Section 7 of the Legislative Decree no. 368/2001;
- Written form: The term must be written, the failure of which will render the contract ineffective and result in permanent employment.
With regard to the apprenticeship contract, the following are the key changes:
- Written form: is required only for the text of the contract and for the probationary period agreement (and is therefore excluded from the individual formative plan);
- Repeal of Article 2, paragraph 3 bis: the hiring of additional apprentices is no longer conditional on the hiring of the previous apprentices at the time of the formative period;
- Compensation: except as provided by the national collective bargaining agreement, la the remuneration of apprentices will account for the actual hours worked and the hours of training to a maximum of 35% of the total number of hours;
- Training: is at the discretion of the employer (no longer mandatory) if the training is integrated with public training.
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