Professionalism, experience and reliability: these are the hallmarks of the Salerno Law Firm for over 20 years highly specialized in providing advice and assistance to managers, teachers, ATA staff and to all those involved, in any capacity, in education disputes. Since 2000 Antonio Salerno, a brilliant lawyer from Salerno, has in fact begun to deal with the litigation of the “world” of the School, where over time, extending and expanding his skills to further legal and civil law aspects, he has focused his attention professional sponsoring and representing the interests of its clients throughout the national territory, offering qualified assistance even in higher jurisdictions.
Avv. Salerno, tell us your story. How did your passion for this profession come about?
I am a son of 1970, born in Salerno, and before the Advocacy my great passion was sporting activity which played a decisive role in the formation of my personality, since it helped me develop and refine numerous qualities. Above all, the ability to face and overcome difficulties, the attitude to collaborate and “team up” with others, the awareness of one’s skills and a winning mindset. I was an athlete of national interest of the Italian Fencing Federation and this discipline has given me enormous and unforgettable satisfactions. Among others, I graduated Italian individual champion in the Under 20 Sword in 1987 in Foggia, I climbed several times on the podium in national events (the most important remains a Bronze Medal won by the Team Absolute Tricolors) and twice I was among the players called up for the World Junior Championships. For two years I competed under the colors of the sports group Fiamme Oro of the State Police and for several seasons I was instructor of numerous athletes. Sports passion, which has been an important training ground for me, has always gone hand in hand with my professional vocation, which brought me closer to the world of law from a very young age. With one goal: to be a good lawyer, a mission that requires commitment, perseverance and above all passion. In order to better defend the rights of each client, it is in fact important to know how to manage one’s work as a real life philosophy, a mission to carry on with heart, commitment and dedication in any legal advice. And that’s what I’ve been doing for over 20 years now!
You have always had an exquisitely administrative training, taking care, before the competent regional TAR or the Council of State, of the most disparate matters pertaining to the administrative judge. Then, in the continuation of his training, he decided to devote himself specifically to the school world. Because?
For a series of crossings, over time I have preferred to sectorise my work, becoming an important national reference point as regards the disputes in the school world, which have increased dramatically in recent years. However, a premise appears necessary. With the notorious Law 107, the Renzi government intended to carry out a significant reform in the great universe of the school: it was a real revolution – a new approach to the way of seeing the world of education which, however, has generated many disagreements – aimed at giving a clear turn to school precariousness thanks to the recruitment of “fresh” teachers ready to meet the needs of the school of the future. Already previously, the European Court of Justice had substantially censored the Italian administration’s work for abuse of recourse to fixed-term contracts beyond a certain period of time (the famous 36 months), thus violating the rights of school workers. The so-called law of the Good School of Renzi, therefore, was born precisely from the need to block as many precarious historians as possible (about 55 thousand) in order to comply with the judgment of the judges of Strasbourg.
What was the 2018 maxi-appeal you sponsored?
Immediately after the 2015 Law, the State began to ban sequential bankruptcy procedures, committing, in my opinion, a serious evaluation error since today there is a very large category of teachers who are still placed in the notorious Exhaustion Rankings (GAE) , from which the state could draw highly qualified personnel, instead of annually announcing bankruptcy procedures. Among these, the one of 2018 stands out, a so-called Competition Pure Simplified, reserved only for teachers qualified for teaching and / or specialized in support, against which there have been a myriad of appeals mostly by non-qualified graduates and ITP teachers. Personally, I represented about six thousand people, before the TAR and the Council of State, who claimed the right to participate in this simplified competition, to then be able to access the world of school. What we questioned was the exclusivity of the procedure which, as such, violates the concept of public competition (specifically, articles 3, 51 and 97, last paragraph of the Constitution, would be violated). Our recursive action was unfortunately nipped: the Constitutional Court intervened on this point, which declared legitimate the mechanism for recruiting personnel reserved exclusively for only one category (teachers qualified for the profession!), As it is linked to extraordinary needs , such as that of consolidating specific professional skills already operational within the Administration itself.
An appeal that had a different outcome was that of recruiting “discontinuous” Firefighters. Can you tell us about it?
Yes, on that occasion the Council of State accepted the appeal promoted by my Firm by ordering the admission of my client to the competition aimed at the defined stabilization of the “discontinuous” Firefighters, that is, of those voluntary policemen who should intervene only in cases of absolute exceptionality, exceptionality that has become the practice. Discontinuities have in fact become permanently incorporated subjects, who receive a paycheck with the same duties as the vigilant regulations hired. And so, the College shared the complaints promoted by my Firm with the specific aim of highlighting on the one hand the perpetrated abuse of the category of “discontinuous” and on the other the unreasonableness of a selection competition based on different physical fitness parameters and more stringent (DM 78/2008) than those (DM 05.02.2020) used for discontinuous, specious and illegitimate activities.
Projects?
Many, such as the opening of new offices, the prompt choice of the high number of disputes and customers distributed throughout the Peninsula and new approaches to the world of law with a scientific method.
