In publicly controlled companies, containing personnel costs is a recurring objective, often driven by the need to maintain economic and financial balance.<\/p>\n
However, the central issue is not economic, but legal.<\/strong><\/p>\n Article 18, paragraph 2-bis, of Decree-Law No. 112\/2008 and Article 19, paragraph 1, of Legislative Decree No. 175\/2016 (the Consolidated Law on Publicly Owned Companies \u2013 TUSP<\/em>) impose sustainability objectives while reaffirming the private-law nature of the employment relationship.<\/p>\n This creates an inherent tension: public-law constraints on the one hand and the application of private labour law principles on the other.<\/p>\n Within this framework, a clear limitation applies: remuneration cannot be reduced unilaterally, except with the employee\u2019s consent or where expressly provided for by law.<\/p>\n Favourable treatments that have been consistently granted over time become part of the employee\u2019s contractual entitlements and cannot be curtailed solely for the purpose of reducing expenditure.<\/p>\n Case law from the Court of Cassation has consistently upheld this principle.<\/p>\n The Joint Chambers of the Court of Cassation, in judgment No. 26283\/2013, first reaffirmed the full applicability of private employment law rules to employment relationships within publicly owned companies, excluding any automatic consequences deriving merely from the public nature of the shareholder.<\/p>\n Consistent with this approach, the Court of Cassation, in judgment No. 20580\/2015, clarified that remuneration components paid on a stable basis acquire a binding nature and cannot be revoked ad nutum<\/em>.<\/p>\n More recently, in judgment No. 13535\/2019, the Court reiterated that an employer cannot unilaterally make adverse changes to remuneration elements that have become consolidated within the contractual synallagma.<\/p>\n Accordingly, a reduction in remuneration can be considered legally sustainable only where one of the following conditions is met:<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0the existence of a mandatory statutory provision allowing such reduction;<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0a collective agreement;<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0a genuine organisational restructuring carried out in compliance with Article 2103 of the Italian Civil Code.<\/p>\n In the absence of these conditions, the legal risk is concrete: litigation, reinstatement of the original remuneration, and an order to pay salary differences.<\/p>\n A unilateral reduction in remuneration is not merely a managerial decision.<\/p>\n It is a measure that must withstand a strict test of legality.<\/p>\n In the absence of a clear statutory basis, trade union negotiation remains the most solid solution to reconcile financial sustainability with the protection of acquired rights.<\/p>\n The Law Firm remains available for any further clarification.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In publicly controlled companies, containing personnel costs is a recurring objective, often driven by the need to maintain economic and financial balance. However, the central issue is not economic, but legal. Article 18, paragraph 2-bis, of Decree-Law No. 112\/2008 and Article 19, paragraph 1, of Legislative Decree No. 175\/2016 (the Consolidated Law on Publicly Owned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30632,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":30768,"it":30766},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30768"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30769,"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30768\/revisions\/30769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}