With judgment No. 174, filed on 22 October 2026, the Constitutional Court declared the constitutional illegitimacy of Article 8 of Law No. 604 of 15 July 1966, limited to the words «if employed by an employer with more than fifteen employees».
The provision concerns workers hired before 7 March 2015 by so-called small employers, that is, companies employing no more than fifteen employees (five in the case of agricultural enterprises) in each production unit or within the same municipality, or no more than sixty in total. For these workers, in the event of dismissal without just cause or justified reason, the law provides that the employer, unless it re-hires the worker within three days, must pay compensation ranging from a minimum of 2.5 to a maximum of 6 months’ salary based on the last overall actual remuneration. The same Article 8 allowed the compensation to be increased up to 10 months’ salary for workers with more than ten years of service and up to 14 months’ salary for workers with more than twenty years of service, but only where the employer had more than fifteen employees.
The question was raised by the Court of Livorno in proceedings brought by a worker hired in November 2003 by a dental practice with fewer than fifteen employees and dismissed in July 2024. The Court of Livorno had found the dismissal unlawful on several grounds, some of them serious, and had considered the range of 2.5 to 6 months’ salary inadequate to compensate the damage and devoid of any deterrent effect on the employer.
The Constitutional Court upheld the challenge. According to the judgment, a range of 2.5 to 6 months’ salary excessively compresses the amount of compensation and prevents a genuine individualisation of the damage suffered by the worker, even in the presence of dismissals affected by the most serious forms of unlawfulness. It amounts to a standardised, flat-rate settlement, unsuited to reflecting the specific features of the individual case, and is ineffective in performing the necessary deterrent function of discouraging the employer from repeating the unlawful conduct. The Court further noted that, following judgment No. 118 of 2025 (which had already removed the equivalent six-month cap for workers hired after 7 March 2015 in small enterprises), workers hired before that date found themselves enjoying a level of financial protection that tended to be less favourable than that afforded to workers hired later, without any rational basis.
To remedy these defects, the Court removed the size requirement that conditioned access to the increased compensation. Since the rules apply only to workers hired before 7 March 2015, all of whom have therefore already accrued at least ten years of service, the Court held that the real obstacle to adequate protection was precisely the fifteen-employee threshold.
As a result of the judgment, even in smaller enterprises the court may set compensation at up to 10 months’ salary for workers with more than ten years of service and up to 14 months’ salary for workers with more than twenty years of service. Quantification remains within the discretion of the court, which will continue to apply the criteria set out in Article 8, namely the number of employees, the size of the enterprise, the worker’s length of service, and the conduct and circumstances of the parties.
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