The rules governing compensation payable in cases of unlawful dismissal by small businesses have undergone significant developments following interventions by the Italian Constitutional Court, most recently Constitutional Court Order No. 131\/2026.<\/p>\n
Article 9(1) of Legislative Decree No. 23\/2015 (the so-called Jobs Act) governs the financial consequences of unlawful dismissals carried out by employers that do not meet the workforce thresholds set out in Article 18 of Law No. 300\/1970 (the Workers\u2019 Statute) namely, the well-known threshold of 15 employees.<\/p>\n
The provision previously stipulated that, in such cases, compensation should be reduced by half compared with the amount applicable to larger employers and, in any event, could not exceed a maximum of six months\u2019 salary.<\/p>\n
This maximum cap was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in Judgment No. 118\/2025.<\/p>\n
According to the Court, a rigid and predetermined cap prevented judges from adjusting compensation to the specific circumstances of each case, thereby undermining the principles of reasonableness, proportionality and adequacy of the compensation awarded to the employee.<\/p>\n
Following that ruling, the six-month cap has been definitively removed from the legal system.<\/p>\n
The rule providing that, for smaller employers, compensation continues to be determined at half the amount applicable under the general regime remains unchanged.<\/p>\n
The removal of the maximum cap has significant practical implications.<\/p>\n
Judges are no longer bound by a predetermined ceiling when assessing compensation. Instead, they may carry out an assessment that more closely reflects the specific circumstances of each dispute, while complying with the statutory criteria and the principles developed by the Constitutional Court\u2019s case law.<\/p>\n
The current legal framework therefore reinforces the principle that compensation for unlawful dismissal cannot be determined through automatic mechanisms, but must result from a concrete and proportionate assessment.<\/p>\n
The objective is to strike a balance between the need for legal certainty and the effectiveness of the protection afforded to employees in cases of unlawful dismissal.<\/p>\n
The Law Firm remains available to provide any further clarification.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The rules governing compensation payable in cases of unlawful dismissal by small businesses have undergone significant developments following interventions by the Italian Constitutional Court, most recently Constitutional Court Order No. 131\/2026. Article 9(1) of Legislative Decree No. 23\/2015 (the so-called Jobs Act) governs the financial consequences of unlawful dismissals carried out by employers that do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":30853,"it":30850},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30853"}],"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=30853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30854,"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30853\/revisions\/30854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allavellilegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}