LABOUR | Supreme Court on lawfulness of dismissal during parental leave

In its decision No. 2618 of 4 February 2025, the Italian Supreme Court ruled that, also in light of the organisational efforts and costs faced by the employer, the dismissal of an employee who, while on parental leave, performs a different working activity is lawful. In the case brought before the Supreme Court, in particular, the employee had challenged the dismissal served upon him for having carried out another work activity during the period of paid parental leave pursuant to Article 32 of Legislative Decree No. 151/2001. The Court of Second Instance rejected the aforesaid claim, finding that the conduct in question had been proved. The Supreme Court – confirming what had been established by the Court of Appeal – noting that the purpose of parental leave is to ensure the child’s right to enjoy the material and affective assistance of both parents in the first years of life, held that the compression of the employer’s initiative and the sacrifice imposed on the community in relation to the social and economic costs connected to the use of parental leave, justify a particularly rigorous assessment, from a disciplinary point of view, of the employee’s conduct which took the form of a diversion from the purposes inherent to the parental leave and of the exploitation of such measure for the realisation of aims wholly unrelated to it. On these grounds, the Supreme Court rejected the opponent’s appeal.

Newsletter n. 104 – February 2025