The emergency agile work regulations expiring at the end of April will be extended. After an in-depth political debate, also collecting the appeal proposals of the social partners, the government is ready to present in the next Sostegni decree a rule that moves forward the deadline (currently set at 30 April) which, due to coronavirus, allows employers of work to be able to activate smart working with a unilateral act, that is, without having to sign an individual agreement, as required by ordinary law, no. 81 of 2017 which, in the absence of an extension, would come back into force in a couple of weeks, forcing companies to fulfill new bureaucratic requirements for millions of workers.
Target 30 September
The rule that provides for a new extension of the simplified rules on smart working is being written to the Ministry of Labor (before the launch there will be a passage with the social partners); and, from what is learned, the extension should go hand in hand with the course of the pandemic and the large-scale resumption of production activities, indicatively scheduled for after the summer, when, according to the estimates of the same executive, a diffusion of vaccinations carried out in such a way that it is possible to reasonably believe that herd immunity has been reached. The hypothesis on which a large portion of the majority, from Fi to the League and a large part of the Democratic Party, is an extension of the simplified rules on smart working at least until 30 September to ensure companies an adequate time frame to regulate agile work between its employees.
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The audience of interested workers
The issue is delicate, above all, as mentioned, for the numbers involved. According to the first analyzes of the Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano and Randstad Research, in the coming months, agile work could affect an audience between 3 and 5 million workers, confirming itself as a tool that people like, and that has known, during the acute phase of the pandemic, combining productivity, safety and work-life balance (currently, as INAP recalled, over 5 million employees are in agile work, 6.5 million during the first lockdown – 54% in large companies of employees lend their business, in whole or in part, “remotely”). “I expect that the legislative proposal being studied by the government provides for the extension of agile work at least until September 30 – explains the undersecretary for work, Tiziana Nisini -. As Lega we have also prepared an amendment to clarify that the layoff can be granted in continuity with the 12 weeks of the Covid-19 shock absorber foreseen by the 2021 maneuver, therefore without time gaps, and at the same time giving companies more time to submit the application. “.
Requests for extension
To push for at least September 30 is also Paolo Zangrillo, a member of the Labor Commission of the Chamber, who had presented a specific amendment to the Sostegni 1 decree, which was then transformed into a binding agenda for the government. The extension rule today being studied by the Ministry of Labor confirms this commitment.
Openings also from the Pd. “It is necessary to give companies more time to formalize individual agreements and design agile post-emergency work – said the new president of the Labor Commission of the Democratic Party, Romina Mura – after in recent days the parent company dem in Montecitorio, Debora Serracchiani, has was expressed in favor of an extension of the simplified rules of smart working -. Subsequently – continued Mura – it will be necessary to open a discussion between the social partners to define the new rules of smart working “.