What is dismissal for justified objective reasons in Italy?
Italian employment law allows employers to dismiss employees for reasons unrelated to the employee's conduct — so-called giustificato motivo oggettivo (justified objective reason). This includes genuine business restructuring, elimination of a role, financial difficulties or technological change.
However, the law imposes strict conditions: the need to eliminate the role must be genuine and not pretextual, and the employer must have made a genuine attempt to redeploy the employee in another available position within the company before resorting to dismissal.
The telltale sign: hiring a replacement
Courts and the Supreme Court have consistently held that hiring someone to perform substantially the same duties as the dismissed employee — especially within a short time — is one of the strongest indicators that the dismissal was pretextual.
The reasoning is simple: if the role was genuinely eliminated for business reasons, there would be no one to hire. If a new employee performs the same tasks, the role was not eliminated — it was merely transferred to a different person. The dismissal in such circumstances is not a genuine redundancy; it is disguised dismissal (licenziamento discriminatorio or ritorsivo).
What the dismissed employee is entitled to
If the dismissal is declared unlawful, the remedies depend on the applicable legal framework:
- Employees hired before 7 March 2015 (pre-Jobs Act): right to reinstatement and payment of lost wages, or compensation of 12–24 months' salary
- Employees hired after 7 March 2015 (Jobs Act regime): compensation of 2–24 months' salary depending on seniority
What to do and the deadlines
The dismissed employee has 60 days to formally contest the dismissal in writing, and a further 180 days to file a claim with the Employment Tribunal. Missing these deadlines means losing the right to challenge the dismissal. Act immediately and consult an employment lawyer.