In what cases is agreement or authorisation required for geolocalisation systems

Having said that, dwelling on the tracking of GPS data, is it possible to install geolocation equipment on cars in use by employees without seeking the prior consent of the trade union by initiating the authorisation procedure at the Inspectorate? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to verify whether GPSs are tools strictly necessary to perform work, or do they 'fall' under the justification of organisational and production requirements, for the safety of work and for the protection of company assets and, therefore, fall within the provision of paragraph 1, according to which the trade union agreement is required or, failing that, the authorisation measure. Moreover, the issue clearly takes on greater significance in the light of paragraph 3 of Article 4, since the legislature has allowed the information collected in compliance with the provisions of both paragraphs 1 and 2 to be used for all the purposes connected with the employment relationship and, therefore, also for disciplinary purposes, provided that the employee is provided with adequate information[4].

The National Labour Inspectorate has intervened on several occasions to try to delineate the scope of use of geolocation systems.

Starting in 2016, some territorial structures of the Ministry of Labour began to pay attention to the issue and, with official notes, provided partially different, sometimes conflicting answers. Even though - it should be recalled - the same Ministry, although without an explanatory note, had published on the ministerial website a GPS installation request model, to be addressed, for authorisation, to the territorially competent Labour Directorate. Thus, suggesting the need to follow the authorisation procedure also for geolocation installations.

However, for example, the Interregional Labour Directorate of Milan, with the note 5689/2016, specified how it follows from the clause 'to perform work' that the notion of instrument of work includes any instrument suitable to perform the function of a means normally necessary to perform work, citing a guideline of the Supreme Court and the doctrine, according to which, a GPS installed on a vehicle made available to a driver is an instrument of work: "if a worker in the road haulage sector drives a company vehicle equipped with a GPS detector for insurance and/or production and/or safety needs and the GPS tracks the movements of the vehicle and, therefore, indirectly follows the movements of the worker, it can be considered that the accessory instrument implanted on the vehicle falls within the provision of the new art. 4, paragraph 2, of Law no. 300/1970', given that 'the vehicle and the GPS both serve, inseparably and unitarily, to the worker to perform his work and, therefore, are a work tool in their uniqueness'. The same applies to the company smartphone assigned, for example, to salesmen and equipped with an 'app' of maps useful to the worker for his movements. In such cases, the Interregional Labour Directorate of Milan ruled out the obligation of a prior trade union agreement or of an alternative application for authorisation to the Territorial Labour Directorate.

The Territorial Labour Directorate of Latina was of a different opinion, according to the authorisation measure issued by the same (No. 12519/2016), following an application submitted by a security company wishing to install a satellite tracking system on company vehicles for the purpose of carrying out surveillance. Following the interpretation provided by the Interregional Labour Directorate of Milan, this installation could be considered a 'work tool' and, therefore, could be exempted from prior authorisation. Instead, the Latina Directorate renounced this procedural simplification and made the installation subject to the authorisation procedure[5]. The Inter-regional Directorate of Venice had also taken the same view as the territorial office of Central Italy, which, in its note 2256/2016 addressed to the territorial directorates of the North-East, although not accompanied by a general theoretical reconstruction, issued an informative guide to the submission of the application ex art. 4 for both audiovisual equipment and GPS.

In this context, on 7 November 2016, the National Labour Inspectorate intervened, providing guidance on the correct reading of Article 4 with reference to the installation of GPS satellite tracking equipment mounted on company cars.

These systems make it possible to monitor employees' movements, the duration of breaks and travel times by locating the vehicle on a satellite map, and for this reason they fall within the control systems governed by Article 4 of the Workers' Statute. Therefore, as a general rule, their installation is subject to an agreement to be signed with the unitary or company trade union representatives or, failing that, to the issue of authorisation by the competent territorial Directorate. However, Article 4 established that the agreement and authorisation are not necessary for the instruments used by the worker to perform work. In fact, as recalled, the authorisation procedures indicated by the provision do not apply 'to the instruments used by the worker to render the work performance and to the instruments for recording access and attendance'. Consequently, it is essential to determine when the installation and use of the geolocation system is strictly functional to "...render work ...". In other words, the element to be assessed in order to determine whether it is necessary to enter into the trade union agreement, i.e. to submit an application for authorisation, is whether or not the devices are an indispensable means for the employee to perform the work performance stipulated in the contract and, therefore, for that reason, these systems have been used and made available to him.

On the basis of the premises made, the circular had clarified that, usually, geolocation systems have an additional nature to work tools and are not necessary and essential to perform the work performance, but are used, more to meet additional needs of an insurance, organisational or production nature or to ensure work safety. Consequently, tracking devices are subject to the provisions of Article 4(1) of Law No. 300/1970 and may be installed only after an agreement has been concluded with the trade union representative or, in the absence of such an agreement, after authorisation by the National Labour Inspectorate.

The circular of the Inspectorate goes on to state that only in rare and very particular cases do GPSs turn into real work tools with the possibility, therefore, of disregarding the intervention of trade unions or the administrative procedure of an authorising nature. These hypotheses occur when the work cannot be performed without resorting to the use of such localisation systems or, again, when the installation is required by specific legislative or regulatory provisions, such as for GPS in the case of transport of cash-in-transit vehicles exceeding Euro 1,500,000.

Even in more recent years, with the 9728/2019 and 2572/2023, the Inspectorate had provided opinions on the legitimate installation of GPS systems on smartphones, PDAs and vehicles used by employees of a company for goods transport and delivery services. On both occasions, the object of assessment had been the requirements of work safety, the protection of company assets and the most efficient organisation of production activities, to be reconciled with the protection of workers' rights and freedoms, providing for the application of Article 4(1) of Law 300/1970.

Almost ten years after the first documents of practice referred to, the Labour Inspectorate returned to the subject with the 831 of 28 January 2026 and 1511 of 16 February 2026.

With the first document, geolocation systems installed on vehicles transporting hazardous waste, subject to traceability requirements in the National Electronic Waste Tracking Register - Rentri, are considered. Given the provision of Article 188-bis of Legislative Decree. 152/2006, concerning the imposition of the tracking of data relating to the routes taken by the means of transport of hazardous waste as a condition for the exercise of the business activity, the Inspectorate totally excluded this case from the application of Article 4, not only because the employer does not have the legitimising reasons provided for by paragraph 1, but above all because the system cannot be considered a necessary tool for the work performance, which can also be carried out without it, also excluding the application of paragraph 2. However, the necessary condition for the exemption from the trade union agreement or the authorising administrative measure, issued by the Inspectorate, is that the geolocation be used exclusively for the purposes provided for by Article 188-bis of Legislative Decree No. 152/2006 and by Ministerial Decree 59/2023, i.e. for the traceability of waste through the digitalisation of the fulfilments related to the handling and transport thereof. Conversely, in the event that the companies concerned intend to pursue organisational and production requirements, the protection of company assets and/or safety at work, the installation of GPS systems, in order to be considered lawful, must follow the guarantee procedures provided for by the Workers' Statute. The requirement set forth in Article 188-bis, in fact, constitutes a condition for the exercise of business activity, and for this reason, the installation of geolocation systems falls outside the scope of Article 4. This orientation had already been followed by the Inspectorate in the note 8931/2017, concerning the installation of video cameras in workshops authorised to carry out periodic vehicle inspections. It should be pointed out, however, that with respect to Circular 2/2016, with regard precisely to GPSs installed for the transport of vehicles exceeding € 1,500,000, the same INL, by reason of the fact that their installation is required by specific legislative/regulatory regulations, had considered such tracking devices to be real work tools (paragraph 2) with the possibility, unlike the more recent note 831/2026, therefore, to disregard the intervention of trade unions or the administrative procedure of an authorising nature.

Lastly, still on the subject of geolocation systems, the Inspectorate expressed itself with the note 1511/2026, specifying that GPSs used for the security of security guards cannot be directly considered as working tools but require a trade union agreement or authorisation by the Inspectorate, in accordance with Article 4(1).

The clarification is provided in response to a question focusing on the activities of surveillance institutions, which are subject to certain conditions, dictated by Ministerial Decree 269/2010, to the obligation to use geolocation systems. The Inspectorate always bases its reasoning on the first two paragraphs of Article 4, since geolocation systems do not always fit easily into one of the two paragraphs.

In the note 1511/2026 it is assessed whether the installation of geolocation systems, supplied to the security guards in order to ensure a suitable radio communication system that allows a real direct communication between the operations centre and the operational staff employed with adequate planimetric support, constitutes an unfailing technical suitability requirement for the companies of the sector concerned, so as to make them fall, as for the security guards, under paragraph 2, as a working tool. The Inspectorate points out that the obligation to install GPS systems does not operate in absolute terms but only in certain areas, fixed by the aforementioned Ministerial Decree 269/2010. Moreover, the installation of said systems is motivated by specific requirements linked both to the safety of the workers and to a more effective management of the service from an organisational and productive point of view, therefore, the INL concludes that the GPS system cannot be considered as a work tool but necessarily remains subject to the examination of the conditions of legitimacy, dictated by paragraph 1, in the trade union agreement or authorisation of the Inspectorate.

A separate topic is defensive controls. A jurisprudential creation for controls carried out by the employer aimed at specifically ascertaining unlawful conduct attributable - on the basis of concrete evidence - to individual employees, even if they occur during the performance of work[6]. In order for such controls to be legitimately carried out outside the regulatory perimeter of Article 4 of the St. Lav, according to jurisprudence, it is necessary that the need for control arises from a well-founded suspicion that the employee is committing offences liable to damage the company's assets or image; that the control takes place consistently with the circumstances of the case, therefore in compliance with the principles of minimum invasiveness, proportionality and strict relevance; that the control is carried out ex post with respect to the emergence of suspicion, to avoid the risk that the defensive purpose actually hides a generalised remote surveillance of the work activity, circumventing the guarantees of art. 4[7]. The judges of legitimacy, in fact, distinguish defensive controls in the strict sense from controls in defence of the company's assets which, instead, concern all employees or groups of employees in the performance of their work which puts them in contact with such assets and which must therefore be carried out in compliance with art. 4.

The recent jurisprudence of legitimacy, precisely on the subject of geolocation systems, has confirmed that they can be used as an instrument of proof for a dismissal for just cause, provided that the monitoring activity can be qualified as defensive controls. The Court of Cassation, with the sentence 30821 of 24 November 2025, in line with most previous case law, reiterated that the use of geolocation tools can be considered legitimate when the control is targeted proportionate and functional for the detection of unlawful conduct in the presence of well-founded suspicions, without turning into a form of continuous and generalised control on the performance of work and without damaging the worker's dignity with hidden and invasive controls on his daily activities. In the case in point, following reports from customers concerning inefficiencies in the performance of the service, the company had initiated a series of internal checks aimed at reconstructing the manner in which work was performed during the shifts of a worker employed in an on-call service, carried out with the aid of a company car equipped with a satellite tracking system.

An examination of the geolocation data of the company vehicle had revealed that, on several occasions, during working hours, the employee had stopped the vehicle and remained inside it for an appreciable period of time, while in the service reports the employee had declared that he had gone, during the same periods of time, to locations other than those actually recorded in the satellite readings. The employer had therefore proceeded to issue a disciplinary notice and dismissal for just cause, considering the conduct inconsistent with the operating methods of on-call duty and in breach of contractual obligations. Moreover, such conduct had already been contested against the employee previously. According to the Ermellini, the check took on a defensive nature and was functional to the ascertainment of potentially unlawful conduct, with the result that its findings can be legitimately used for disciplinary purposes. In the concrete case, it was, in fact, ascertained that the use of GPS data for the control had been determined by specific reports of inefficiency, that the checks had been limited to defined time periods, and that the conduct of the employee was incompatible with the duties of fairness and loyalty, significantly affecting the fiduciary relationship.

The considerations set forth herein are solely the result of the author's thoughts and are in no way binding on the administration.