Legislation to protect workers

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When you want to start a new business or develop an existing business, you need to know the basic rules that protect your employees.

In Italy there are rules governing the relationship between employer, workers and institutions which are specifically concerned with representing the two parties: the unions.

The trade union, in labour law, is a body that represents the workers of the various productive categories.

There are thus workers' unions and associations called confederations representing employers.

The union’s best-known approach is the strike or collective abstention from work, the refusal to go or to undertake work in protest against the employer.

Trade union activity is expressed mainly through collective bargaining, which is one of the main tools of self-regulation for labour relations and trade union relations.

Collective bargaining is that relationship between workers' unions and employers' confederations (often with the intervention of the Government that acts as the promoter and/or arbitrator of the negotiations), which result in autonomous agreements (called collective labour agreements), establishing the basic parameters and rules to be followed by individual employment contracts.

Therefore, all employers and workers who expressly belong to trade unions and confederations that have signed a collective agreement and all those who, although not members, expressly or implicitly accept it, have an obligation to comply with the rules contained therein.

Collective bargaining therefore provides protection for both workers and employers.

For further information, please visit the following websites:

The European Union portal on Italian trade unions

The Ministry of Labour and Social Policy

Updated on 23/11/2020