Employ anyone in Italy and you do not write most of the employment terms. A CCNL (contratto collettivo nazionale di lavoro) — a national agreement negotiated for a whole industry between employer associations and unions — fixes pay floors, hours, probation, sickness, notice and severance. Your contract is the short document sitting on top of it. Which one fits depends on what the Italian operation actually does; a casual answer accrues a shortfall for years.
What a CCNL actually is
Italy has no statutory minimum wage: the CCNL pay tables do that job, grade by grade.
The agreement itself is a private contract between organisations, not a statute, and the machinery for extending one to everybody was never built. Article 36 of the Constitution closes the gap — pay must be proportionate and sufficient to live on — and the benchmark a judge applies is the CCNL table for the sector. That is settled — and why the agreement reaches employers who signed nothing.
Less settled, and worth confirming: how far an employer belonging to no association is bound to the non-pay terms — notice, sickness, discipline.
The nearest equivalent in your own system
- Australia — modern awards: binding minimum pay and conditions for an industry or occupation, above the National Minimum Wage. The closest match there is.
- Ireland — Sectoral Employment Orders and Employment Regulation Orders, in construction, electrical contracting, security, contract cleaning.
- Canada — outside Quebec an agreement binds only a certified bargaining unit. A solicitor who knows a Quebec décret recognises the Italian structure at once.
- United Kingdom — nothing comparable beyond agricultural wages boards in parts of the UK: the minimum and living wage, then whatever you negotiate.
- United States — the FLSA floor, state minimums, bargaining only where a union is certified.
A Sydney or Dublin employer recognises the shape; a Manchester, Toronto or Boston employer often does not, and under-budgets.
Which agreement applies
The test is the activity the Italian business actually carries out — not what the parent does, not what the corporate purpose says. Each sector has its own scales and notice periods, and the INPS and INAIL classification follows the real activity.
Cheap agreements circulate, signed by organisations of little weight, while legislation and public procurement increasingly point to those signed by the comparatively most representative bodies. Ask who signed yours. And apply it whole: the pay table does not come separately.
Hiring day: what must be in writing, what must be filed
The employer must exist first: the Italian entity or a registered branch, payroll positions open. If that is still ahead, the company formation guide and the note on opening a subsidiary cover the choice. Then:
- Probation must be in writing before work starts. Agreed later, it is generally worthless.
- The notification to the public employment service is filed by midnight of the day before day one. Not the first week: without it the worker counts as undeclared.
- Written information on the essential terms is owed under the transparency rules: the CCNL, the grade, the level.
- Everyone needs an Italian tax code, the foreign director who signs included — the codice fiscale comes first, not last.
- Fixed terms, apprenticeships and agency staffing carry limits on duration and renewal; exceed them and the job converts to permanent.
TFR: severance that is not a redundancy payment
Every employee accrues trattamento di fine rapporto on a statutory formula — broadly the year's pay divided by 13.5, revalued annually — paid on termination for any reason: resignation, dismissal for cause, retirement alike.
It is neither a redundancy payment nor a pension contribution. A 401(k) match, UK auto-enrolment, an Irish PRSA, Canadian RRSP contributions or Australian superannuation are money set aside for retirement; TFR is deferred salary already promised. Provision it from the first month.
Dismissal is not at will, and a clock runs
Dismissal needs a justified reason — disciplinary or economic — stated in writing in the letter. Disciplinary cases need a procedure first: a written statement of the charge, then at least five days for the employee to answer. Deciding before that window closes can undo the dismissal by itself.
What an unlawful dismissal costs — compensation in months of salary, reinstatement in defined categories — depends on the hire date and headcount, with a threshold around fifteen. Parliament has rewritten this repeatedly and the Constitutional Court removed the rigid seniority formula: an old memo is not safe. The employee's clock is short: sixty days to contest out of court, then months to sue — check both against the current text.
Two traps run the other way. A resignation must go through the official online procedure; a signed letter alone is generally not effective. And there is no qualifying period of service: no analogue to the UK's service requirement for unfair dismissal, itself under reform, Ireland's twelve months, or the Fair Work minimum employment period.
Contractors are not a shortcut
Engaging a freelancer to avoid all this is the most common structural mistake we see. Italian law looks at substance: fixed hours, direction, integration into the organisation, dependence on one client. A separate rule catches collaborations the client organises as to time and place.
Your own system has a version: IR35 in the UK, Revenue's employment-status framework in Ireland, the CRA's tests in Canada, sham-contracting rules in Australia. Here a labour judge usually decides, and recharacterisation runs backwards over the whole period: contributions, TFR, holiday pay, penalties.
Seconding someone from home
On social security the aim is a certificate keeping the person in the home system so contributions are not paid twice: a certificate of coverage under the US–Italy totalization agreement, an A1 for an Irish or other EU employer, the post-Brexit detached-worker arrangements for the UK, the Canada–Italy agreement (Quebec operates its own). Australia has one too, but whether it covers a posted worker, and how superannuation interacts, should be settled before the posting.
Immigration splits the group. An EU employer falls under the posted-workers regime: prior notification to the Ministry of Labour, a contact person in Italy, documents in Italian. A US, UK, Canadian or Australian employer needs work authorisation before the person travels. Tax residence turns on days present, registration and family ties, on a recently rewritten definition. Home reporting does not pause: the United States taxes its citizens wherever they live, Canada and Australia on residence.
We start with what the Italian activity actually is: that fixes the CCNL, and the CCNL fixes the real cost of each hire, before you commit to a headcount. Then contracts, notifications, payroll with an Italian consultant and the required policies. If you cannot travel to sign, a power of attorney runs the sequence without you.
If you already employ people in Italy and have never checked which agreement applies, that check is short. Every relationship has to be read on its own facts, so bring your usual solicitor or in-house counsel in alongside us.
There is no charge for the first conversation, and it is with a lawyer. Bring the job description, the grade you have used and what you currently pay.