Lawyers International Network for Employees and Executives (LINEE)

Workplace Issues

Telework, Smart Work, and the Right to Disconnect in Italy

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In our previous post, we explained the European Union’s pre- and post-pandemic protections of the changing workplace, including remoting arrangements. In this post, we explore the measures our home country—Italy—has taken.

Regulating Telework in Italy: Pre-COVID-19

According to Eurofound (2020), while only 10% worked from home at least several times a week before the pandemic (compared to 15.8% on average in the EU-27), the first wave of the pandemic brought this number to 39.9% (compared to 36.5% on average in the EU-27). This makes Italy among the Member States with the highest increases in the share of workers (18+) working from home during the pandemic.

Smart Working and the Right to Disconnect in Italy Read more.

Telework: A European Approach to Protecting Workers

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Teleworking is likely to become much more common following the increase in telework since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, more extensive telework poses complicated threats to workers due to blurred work-life boundaries, extensive screen time, and a lack of social support found in office environments.

This emphasizes the importance of introducing “right to disconnect” initiatives to avoid large segments of workers being at risk of physical and emotional exhaustion.

Overview of the Uptick in Remote Work

According to estimates by the Eurofound (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions), nearly 40% of workers in the EU began to work remotely due to the pandemic in 2020, with the percentage of remote workers growing nearly 34% compared to 2019. Read more.

Why Doesn’t the U.S. Expand Parental Leave – Like the Rest of the World?

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According to data from the United States Department of Labor, there are 72 million women ages 16 and over in our country who are currently working or looking for work, accounting for 47 percent of the nation’s total labor force. In many other countries where women are an equally significant and important portion of the workforce, paid family leave is an integral part of encouraging workers to have families and successfully return to the workplace, but when women in the U.S. decide to have children, there is no such federal protection. In today’s modern economy, the discussion of whether the government should expand federally-mandated parental leave is the subject of intense debate.

What Evidence Will French Labor Courts Accept as Proof in Employment Disputes?

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When lawsuits over employment disputes go to trial in France’s Labor Court trials, the parties usually submit proof to prosecute or defend the allegations. But by what standard do the Labor Courts determine the admissibility of the evidence presented?

Under French law, the principle is that all evidence in civil trials is acceptable. However, that assumes that the evidence is lawful, meaning it must have been obtained and used fairly at all stages. If a party cannot demonstrate to the Court that it collected and used the evidence lawfully, the evidence will be ruled inadmissible from the proceedings.

Evidence obtained clandestinely or by invading an employee’s privacy often come under scrutiny. Read more.

Reopening the Workplace: A Gender Perspective on the Economic Fallout of COVID-19

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The COVID-19 coronavirus doesn’t discriminate between men and women, but the same can’t be said of the pandemic’s impact on the U.S. workforce.

Traditional support for women at work has been drastically reduced, if not eliminated, during the crisis. Women have had to reorient to working from home while balancing family responsibilities, including childcare and home schooling. Admittedly, both male and female parents have had to face these challenges, but women have shouldered a disproportionate share of the burden.

Over the past 25 years, legislators and employers have implemented measures to assist the growing percentage of working women. By exploring early childhood programs, daycare, flexible hours, and job sharing these efforts have encouraged co-parenting, offered assistance to single parents, and created greater work-life balance. The COVID-19 outbreak eliminated these supports, and it’s anyone’s guess when these efforts will resume. Read more.

Working From Home in France After COVID-19

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The current COVID-19 crisis has had consequences on employment conditions in France. Before the pandemic, working from the company’s premises was the rule, while working from a home office was the exception.

Over the last few years, there has been an emerging trend in favor of home offices, facilitated in particular by transportation strikes, the need to save on office rents, and other factors. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this process. Overnight, most employees have had to work from home, and companies had no choice but to adapt quickly to this situation.

Once operations return to normal, companies willing to implement or permanently facilitate remote working will have to comply with the following rules: Read more.

The “Cura Italia” Decree and the Injection of Liquidity to Support Italy During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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The Italian government enacted a new and powerful economic plan – the “Cura Italia” – on March 17, 2020, sending Italian citizens a strong message of solidarity and support to Italian citizens. The Decree allocates a liquidity injection of some €25 billion in aid for workers, businesses, and families through a liquidity injection to support the economy.

How the Cura Italia Addresses Employment and the Workplace

The most significant portion of the aid will be allocated to reinforce social safety nets, including people who, under ordinary conditions, could not access those benefits. Among the measures are:

  • Extending the Ordinary Earnings Supplement Fund and implementing a simplified procedure for all companies that intend to adopt the ordinary layoff. This includes a mechanism for derogating from the maximum limit (currently 24 months);
  • Extending and upgrading the Redundancy Fund in Exception for employers with fewer than six employees (even just one employee). This includes sectors covered by the Ordinary Earnings Supplement Fund and not protected by Solidarity Funds, such as services and logistics;
  • An appropriation of €500 million for the Wage Integration Fund for micro-enterprises employing between one and five employees who cannot count on social safety nets.

Special Rules Regarding Ordinary Salary Integration and Ordinary Allowance

In 2020, employers who suspend or reduce their work due to events attributable to the COVID-19 emergency can apply for ordinary salary integration or access to the ordinary allowance for a maximum duration of nine weeks (ending August 2020). Applications can be submitted by the end of the fourth month following the one in which the period of suspension or reduction of work began. Read more.

Advice on How to Approach Difficult Performance Reviews At Work

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What motivates you at work? For some, it is their salary, for others getting on with work colleagues. A recent survey held the biggest single motivator is people’s enjoyment of their role. However, that same survey carried out by the Institute of Leadership and Management, revealed that 25% of employees think their appraisals are performed poorly by management.

Appraisals and performance reviews are an important part of your professional development. Recognition for work done and constructive, supportive feedback on improving performance can be key motivators. If you feel that that you are failing to meet the standards required but you are not being helped to achieve them, you are likely to feel demotivated very quickly. Equally, if you work hard and perform well you will feel frustrated if your efforts are never recognised or rewarded.

When things aren’t going well at work and you are struggling to meet expectations but feel unsupported you need to know what to do to turn things around. You need to know where to turn if you feel that management is failing to properly manage your performance and motivate you in your role. Read more.

What to Do If You Are Worried about Getting a Bad Reference from Your Last Job

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When you leave a job in difficult circumstances, it can come as a huge relief to be out of a stressful situation. But that relief can be short-lived when you come to applying for a new job and are worried about what will happen when your prospective employer asks for a reference. We set out some guidance that may help you handle the situation.

These days it is very common for an employer to give a basic reference covering job title and dates of employment, whether things end amicably or otherwise. These are so common that a reference like this is unlikely to harm your chances of finding a new job. The bigger the organisation, the more likely that they will have a policy of just giving this sort of reference. So however badly things ended, you might not get the negative reference you are worried about after all.

There’s no obligation on an employer to give a reference, but if they do then the reference should be true, accurate and not misleading. In practice, that’s not tremendously helpful; employers rarely lie, they just say “we think they were useless” or similar. That’s their opinion and it’s difficult to say it’s false. Commonly, the problem is not with the written reference, which may be bland, but if someone telephones your previous employer they may get more information in the call and it is very difficult to get evidence about this. Again, the bigger your former employer, the less likely this is to be a problem; the call is more likely to get directed to HR, who won’t know you personally and who will be less likely to expand on the written reference. Read more.

Employment Solicitor: Why Employers Should Be Taking Stress at Work Seriously

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Britain may be clawing her way out of an unprecedented economic downturn but the cost of the crash is far more than just financial.

Stress is now the biggest cause of long-term absence from work in the UK according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development; an entire workforce is sat at home, unproductive.

According to the Health & Safety Executive, in the midst of the economic crash an astonishing 400,000 people a year were absent from work due to stress. In 2010 and 2011, 1,152,000 people were absent due to work-related illnesses – stress is by far the biggest danger at work. Read more.

The Dangers of Social Media in the UK Workplace

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Most people will, I suspect, have had little sympathy for the Wandsworth Prison officer sacked and others that faced disciplinary action after photos of them wearing T-shirts saying ‘We Have Madeleine McCann’ during a drunken night out were posted on Facebook. It was a story that provokes a visceral response of incomprehension and repulsion, but that obscures a far more subtle point which concerns the rights and wrongs of action against employees where they have done something wrong in their private lives or online explains Employment Solicitor Ivor Adair…….

I sometimes wonder if Don Draper from Mad Men (if you don’t know the show, most of his colleagues know little about him or his private lifestyle), lived and worked in 2014 could ever have been the subject of the remark, “No one’s ever lifted that rock. He could be Batman for all we know.” I doubt it.

TOWIE suggests that there are more than a few UK employees who have degraded themselves in some drunken act whilst on holiday with friends. Should every employer be free to dismiss or discipline when it discovers through social media that an employee has done something wrong outside work? Of course not and the law recognises that – but there is a balance to be struck between having a private life (assuming there is an expectation of privacy) and a justified inference with that. Read more.