June 2025 Popular Referendum and Management of Election Permits
- May 13, 2025
- Reading time: 7 min
News No. 13/2025
We are writing to provide you with a summary of the questions that will be put to citizens in the upcoming referendum on June 8 and 9, 2025, regarding employment and citizenship.
There are a total of five questions, all of which are repeal proposals aimed at amending or eliminating specific legal provisions currently in force.
The first question concerns the employment contract with increasing protections—Regulations on unlawful dismissals: Repeal, with the reinstatement of the possibility of reinstatement to the workplace for employees dismissed without just cause, superseding the provisions introduced by the Jobs Act, which provided only for financial compensation.
The text of the question is as follows: “Do you want Legislative Decree No. 23 of March 4, 2015 (...) containing: ‘Provisions regarding open-ended employment contracts with increasing protections,’ implementing Law No. 183 of December 10, 2014, to be repealed in its entirety?”
The proposal therefore calls for a return to the system in place prior to the Jobs Act, reinstating the judge’s authority to order the reinstatement of an employee hired after March 7, 2015, in the event of dismissal without just cause or valid reason.
If approved, the referendum would result in the complete repeal of Legislative Decree No. 23/2015, eliminating the “increasing protections” and allowing the “actual protection” system to be applied to all workers—a system based on a judge’s assessment and, in some cases, on the reinstatement of the dismissed worker to their job.
The second question concerns workers at small businesses, calling for the elimination of the cap on compensation in cases of wrongful termination, thereby giving judges greater discretion in calculating the amount of compensation.
The text of the question is as follows: “Do you wish to repeal Article 8 of Law No. 604 of July 15, 1966, entitled ‘Provisions on Individual Dismissals,’ as replaced by Article 2, paragraph 3, of Law No. 108 of May 11, 1990, limited to the words ‘between one’ and the words ‘and a maximum of 6’ and the words ‘The maximum amount of the aforementioned severance pay may be increased to up to 10 months’ pay for employees with more than ten years of service and up to 14 months’ pay for employees with more than twenty years of service, if employed by an employer who employs more than fifteen workers.’?
If approved, the referendum would remove regulatory restrictions on compensation, potentially increasing financial protections for employees of small employers in the event of unjustified termination.
The third question proposes the partial repeal of provisions regarding the setting of fixed terms for employment contracts, maximum duration, and conditions for extensions and renewals, reinstating stricter restrictions on their use in order to combat forms of precarious employment.
The text of the third question is as follows: “Do you want Legislative Decree No. 81 of June 15, 2015, concerning ‘Comprehensive Regulation of Employment Contracts and Revision of the Legislation on Job Duties, pursuant to Article 1, paragraph 7, of Law No. 183 of December 10, 2014,’ to be repealed, limited to the following parts: Article 19, paragraph 1, limited to the words (...), Article 21, paragraph 01, limited to the words ‘freely during the first twelve months and, thereafter,’?”
If the referendum were to pass, we would return to a system in which every fixed-term contract would have to be justified by concrete needs, thereby reducing flexibility for businesses. In other words, the referendum proposes to make it mandatory to provide a justifying reason from the very beginning of the fixed-term contract and to limit the parties’ autonomy in defining that reason.
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