2015/31 | LEM Working Paper Series | ||||||||||||||||
Labour market reforms in Italy: evaluating the effects of the Jobs Act |
|||||||||||||||||
Marta Fana, Dario Guarascio and Valeria Cirillo |
|||||||||||||||||
Keywords | |||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
JEL Classifications | |||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||||||||||
Law 183 of 2014, evocatively named the ‘Jobs Act’, has determined a
deep change in the Italian industrial relations. Bringing at
completion a reform process begun in the 1990s, the Jobs Act has
introduced a new contract type - ‘contratto a tutele crescenti’ -
implying a substantial downsize of obligation for workers’
reinstatement in case of firms invalidly firing them. The new
permanent contract is therefore deprived of the substantial re-
quirements of an open-ended contract. The Law has also weakened the
legal constraints for firms intending to monitor workers through
electronic devices and introduced new incentives for firms using
temporary contracts. This article frames the Jobs Act within the
overall labour market reform process occurred in Italy since
mid-nineties and provides a first evaluation of its impacts on the
Italian labour market. Taking advantage of different data sources
(administrative and labour force data) and concentrating the analysis
over the period after the Jobs Act implementation, the investi- gation
provides the following results: the expected boost in employment
growth is not detected; an increase in the share of temporary
contracts over the open-ended ones is observed; a raise of part-time
contracts within the new permanent positions emerges. The analysis
shows that the Jobs Act failed in achieving its main goals. We discuss
the observed evidence evaluating the appropriateness of the Law
183/2014 in the present Italian economic context accounting, in
particular, for the structural effects of the recent crisis.
|
Downloads
|
|
| |
|
Back
|
|