The collective agreement and the errors of perspective to be avoided in delegation

Time is running out for the Italia government, also in matters of labour law. The enabling act No. 144/2025 on just pay and collective bargaining, which came into force on 18 October 2025, requires the executive to issue the implementing decrees within six months. The deadline will therefore expire on 18 April 2026 (or 17 July at the latest, if the 90-day extension for parliamentary opinions is triggered).

This is a crossroads for our industrial relations system and for providing a structural response to the (EU) 2022/2041 directive on adequate minimum wages. However, the current wording of the delegation contains a systemic problem that risks producing effects diametrically opposed to those desired. In particular, this lies in the dangerous semantic-legal shift operated by the legislator: the'abandonment of the historical qualitative criterion of the contract signed by the comparatively most representative organisations in favour of a merely quantitative criterion, or the reference to the most widely applied collective bargaining agreements with reference to the number of companies and employees.

In a labour market such as Italia's, plagued by hundreds of contracts filed with the Cnel, relying solely on numerical data (based on Uniemens flows) is an error of perspective. If a pirate collective contract - characterised by downward regulatory and wage protections - becomes widespread for mere labour cost saving logics, l. 144/2025 risks transforming an elusive pathology into a legal standard. In other words, there is a risk of crystallising contractual dumping. Empirical proof of this risk comes from recent research (2025/2026) conducted by the Laboratory on the Equivalence of Ccnl - Crilda Research Centre of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, which I coordinate together with Prof. Claudio Lucifora. Applying our Alfa Method, also in cooperation with Anac and Consip, we analysed some dynamics in the tertiary sector. Our investigation scientifically demonstrates a strategic non-equivalence of some collective bargaining agreements stipulated by minor unions to the Confcommercio or Confesercenti collective bargaining agreements. The unfair competition is not only played out on the fixed components of remuneration, which are systematically lower, but operates a surgical cut on the overall treatment: integrative health, complementary social security, bilaterality and the amount of leave and other institutions disappear or are drastically reduced. It is no coincidence that the Cnel, in a recent work of its own, took its cue from this very methodological approach of ours, framing the analysis through the identification of professional figures and linking it to the procedures for measuring equivalence dictated by the new Code of Contracts (Annex I.01).

How, then, can the course be straightened out before the delegation expires? The government still has the margins to implement the law in a constitutionally oriented manner, following some precise guidelines. Firstly, there is an urgent need to reactivate a structural and genuine confrontation between the government and the social partners. The legitimate self-regulation prerogatives of trade unions and employers' organisations cannot be crushed by imposing heteronomous solutions or ministerial interference. Secondly, when drafting legislative decrees, the notion of the most applied Ccnl must be defused, replacing it with that of the most protective Ccnl (the magis principle). As shown in my recent studies, Article 36 of the Constitution does not ask us to seek mere downward equivalence or the most applied contract, but requires us to strive for the highest possible protection to ensure a free and dignified existence for the worker.

The principle of magis must become the compass for selecting the collective contract parameter. Finally, it is vital to proceed with technical and institutional support for procedures to identify contractual perimeters. The current confusion stems largely from overlapping scopes. Law 144/2025 can still be transformed into a credible embankment against poor labour. But to do so, the government must choose the quality of protection, abandoning the mirage, which is, alas, often misleading, of quantity, even statistical quantity. Case law tells us that the application of a CCNL by an employer, in fact, often does not derive from adherence to a certain system of labour relations, but from mere opportunistic evaluations of economic expediency aimed at squeezing labour costs.