Appeal to unions to confirm what is stipulated by the contract: 18 years of back pay would be unsustainable for companies. “25 years of positive industrial relations at stake”
Genoa – There is alarm among terminal operators, following the ruling by the labor section of the Court of Venice which, accepting the appeal by workers of the Tiv terminal, effectively established that pay for holiday days cannot be lower than ordinary pay and therefore terminal operators should pay back pay from 2007. The Venice precedent, terminal operators denounce, seems to be setting a trend and could spread to other terminals throughout Italy, risking setting off a time bomb.
In particular, in Genoa, the Terminal Operators section of Confindustria has raised the alarm again. “We express the most serious concern for the situation developing in Genoese port companies, regarding the possible opening of litigation by employees to claim pay integrations for holiday treatment with effect from 2007,” denounce the terminal operators in a note, who are reportedly already receiving formal notices of default from some workers.
This is a serious matter, considering it concerns 18 years of back pay, figures that could send smaller companies into crisis if appeals were initiated and were accepted by the judges.
The Terminal Operators section of Confindustria Genoa therefore launches an appeal to employer associations and trade union organizations that signed the National Ports Contract “so that, in the face of the real danger of compromising a history of positive relations that has lasted 25 years, they speak out in defense of the existing instruments, reaffirming the interpretation and philosophy that have always guided the negotiation”.
According to the Genoese terminal operators, in fact, the opening of litigation risks blowing up the contract. “We understand the pressure that the trade union organizations signatory to the national collective labor agreement are under from workers in light of rulings for other categories – underline the Genoese terminal operators, led by president Luca Becce – But we believe that all actors in the system of trade union relations within the port sector must recognize that the agreements stipulated at the national level, as well as at the company level in these 25 years of the Ccnl porti’s existence, started from the recognition of the differentiations between actual work activity and non-derogable ordinary pay”.
The note continues: “On the basis of this truth, all parties must be fully aware of the consequences that, beyond intentions, disputes that suddenly claim delayed integrations of many years could have.
Consequences both for companies, suddenly faced with debts never accounted for in their balance sheets – moreover, entirely unforeseen and unforeseeable, which jeopardize the economic stability of their accounts – and for the regulatory system established by the National Collective Labor Agreement (CCNL) which, inevitably, would be objectively compromised.”
According to the terminal operators, the remuneration treatment for holidays is clearly regulated by Article 11 of the National Collective Labor Agreement for Port Workers, and has been applied and negotiated precisely on principles that differentiate “indef postponable remuneration to be paid at every moment of the employment relationship” from situations “for which it is necessary to recognize a hardship for the worker”, such as night work, shift work, or flexibility. All of this links remuneration to actual presence at work.
The appeal by the workers of the Venetian terminal specifically denounced the fact that they received lower remuneration on holiday days than their ordinary pay, because it was without allowances. And it was triggered based on some rulings, in sectors different from terminal operations, which interpreted European Directive 88 of 2003 and a 2007 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union.
