For five years he had been in charge of welcoming asylum seekers for a cooperative The court declared the provision null and void: there was a blockade due to the pandemic
UDINE. He worked as a “do everything” at the reception service for asylum seekers. Even as a maintenance technician, if necessary, since the phone rang at any time and for any kind of need. He knew this and had pointed it out to his superiors, remembering what his contractual status was, but nothing had changed. And the years had flown by like this, from 2015, when the hiring became definitive, to 2020, when the certainty of that place suddenly failed. And he, a 48-year-old from Udine, married and with two children, suddenly found himself unemployed. In addition, in full health emergency.
Promptly challenged, the provision was declared invalid by the labor judge of the court of Udine, Ilaria Chiarelli, as “in contrast” with the Law Decree 18/20 on the blocking of dismissals for justified objective reasons, introduced to contain the negative repercussions determined to the economy from the spread of Covid 19. Assisted by the lawyer Sara Marchi, the applicant was then reinstated, with condemnation by the employer, the “Nemesi” cooperative, to compensation for damages, for a sum equal to the reference salary for the calculation of the severance indemnity omitted from the date of the torpedoing to that of the actual reintegration. Calculator in hand and also taking into account legal costs, over 72 thousand euros.
Licensed for “termination of the contract”, read the registered letter of 30 June 2020 that the “Nemesis” had sent him, after having learned from the Consortium of cooperatives “Mosaico” of Gorizia, to which he was a member, that the Prefecture of Udine had issued a new call for refugee management and that it would not continue with that service. “Since there is no possibility of using his services in other social activities – he was explained -, we inform you of the withdrawal from the employment relationship for reasons relating to the productive activity, or reduction of personnel due to total cessation of reception activities as a result of change of contract ».
In contesting the legitimacy of the provision, the lawyer Marchi had highlighted both the failure to comply with the repechage (i.e., the employer’s obligation, before proceeding with the dismissal, to take into consideration all the possibilities of relocation of the worker to the internal company), as well as the lack of new recruitment by the companies that took over the contract (the companies “Aracon” and “Codess”). All this, however, in full Covid emergency. And given that, as emerges from the calls for tender and the specifications, the 2019 contract involved 1,100 places (somewhat reduced to 709), while that of 2020 concerned only 500 places, and that therefore there had been a reduction in the 30 percent, “there were no conditions for the worker to be fired by Nemesis – writes the judge in the sentence – and contextually summarized by the successor companies”.
Defended by the lawyer Casanova Fleur, Nemesis had insisted on the loss of the contract, osserving as this had entailed a drastic reduction in employment opportunities for the dismissed worker, who could not have been employed in other sectors, both because they were already saturated and because they were unrelated to their professional characteristics. Nor could the obligation to repechage – again the defense – be extended within the group of cooperatives to which Nemesi was a part, since they were different legal entities. The sentence has been challenged and the hearing set in Trieste for 13 January 2022.
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