Ms Pacchiana, what are the main challenges that labour law is facing in adapting to the ever-changing world of business and work?
The challenges are many and sudden. Some of them are induced by technological changes that are also modifying the paradigms on which labour law is built: while we are still metabolising the exit of labour from the factory and the loss of centrality of machines and plants, technology has built a world made up of artificial intelligence that is potentially self-managing. But it is not only the enterprise that is changing, ‘human capital’ has also profoundly changed: there is no longer ‘the’ subordinate worker on which to build a regulatory model. There are, instead, ‘the’ workers, some of whom are subordinates, others who collaborate in other forms, bearers of interests and needs that are also very different from each other, depending not only on the activity they perform but also on the profound cultural and social differences that distinguish them. The challenge of labour law, therefore, is to be able to give quick and certain answers to these diversified needs.
In an increasingly diversified context, how can labour law adapt to offer balanced and targeted solutions for each type of reality?
In my view, it is necessary to abandon the idea of a single, generalised regulation of relations and leave more room for differentiated regulations, adaptable to the concrete context of reference. In this perspective, the role of collective bargaining becomes particularly crucial. It makes it possible to deal with complex issues with a degree of flexibility and timeliness that ordinary law cannot always guarantee. Collective bargaining must therefore be strengthened, first and foremost by direct intervention to ensure its effectiveness vis-à-vis individuals. But this is not enough. When the social partners, duly selected, are called upon to manage organisational situations with the company, it is necessary to recognise a sort of ‘licence’ of intangibility to the agreements concluded there, which would protect those operations from subsequent revisions. This is the only way to guarantee certainty and speed in responding to the ever-changing protection requirements affecting both parties to the relationship, by means of a negotiation with generalised and intangible effectiveness.
