For years, in the common language of companies, demotion has been associated with extreme cases: the manager relegated to making photocopies, the manager deprived of his responsibilities, the worker “emptied” of his functions.

Recently, however, jurisprudence has introduced a different – and much more relevant – principle for the daily lives of millions of workers: even carrying out inferior tasks for only a limited part of one’s time can be illegitimate, if that situation drags on over time and becomes structural. The Court of Cassation clarified this with order no. 7711 of 30 March 2026, destined to have a significant impact in every production sector.

Forced to perform inferior tasks for years

The case decided by the judges of legitimacy concerned a nurse who, in addition to normal professional activities, had been employed for over ten years in tasks typical of support staff: making beds, transporting patients, carrying out hotel and hygiene tasks.

Be careful though: those tasks did not take up most of the working time; according to the judges, they “only” accounted for approximately 10% of working hours. And here lies the news.

For the Court of Cassation, the fact that the lower tasks are quantitatively limited is not enough to make them lawful, if they are carried out every day, in a stable and continuous manner, for years. In other words: it is not just “how much” time the worker dedicates to those activities that matters, but also their qualitative weight and above all their duration.

Thus ends the myth of “prevalence”

For a long time, attempts were made to justify these situations by claiming that the worker still “mainly” performed the correct tasks. The ruling of the Court of Cassation strongly undermines this argument. The Court, in fact, states that the criterion of prevalence is no longer decisive: there can be demotion even when the worker continues to carry out mainly the activities specific to the qualification, if however he is also permanently used for lower tasks.

It is an important turning point, because it better captures the concrete reality of many work environments. Contemporary demotion often no longer manifests itself with the total elimination of qualified tasks, but with a progressive “hybridization” of the role: higher and lower activities coexist, but the downgrading part ends up wearing out the professional identity, motivation and dignity of the worker over time.

When inferior tasks become illegitimate

The ruling identifies some very clear criteria. Inferior tasks can only be tolerated if they are truly marginal, if they respond to concrete and temporary organizational needs, if they do not become a stable practice and if they remain ancillary to the qualifying activities.

The problem arises when what should be an exception turns into everyday normality. According to the Court of Cassation, even an apparently minimal impact – such as 10% of the working time – loses its marginality if it lasts ten years.

That’s not all: one of the most interesting aspects of the decision also concerns the issue of compensation for damages. The ordinance reiterates a now consolidated principle: the worker does not necessarily have to produce “photographic proof” of the damage suffered. In cases like these, prejudice can also be demonstrated through presumptions, valorising concrete elements such as the duration of the deskilling, its daily reiteration and the nature of the tasks performed.

In the case examined, the judges considered that more than ten years of inferior activities, carried out in a stable and continuous manner, were sufficient to circumstantially demonstrate a damage to the employee’s professionalism and work image.

A ruling that affects many workers

But the real innovative element concerns the criterion used to quantify the compensation. The Court has in fact linked the extent of the damage to the concrete impact of the inferior tasks on working time. Since the downgrading activities occupied approximately 10% of each shift, the compensation was calculated in a corresponding amount: 10% of the monthly salary for the entire period of downgrading, which lasted for over a decade.

The message of the sentence is clear: even apparently marginal inferior tasks, if permanently included in the daily work activity, can affect the professional dignity of the person and give rise to a right to compensation.

As mentioned at the beginning, the decision does not only affect the healthcare sector. Let’s think of the administrative workers used permanently for purely executive activities, of the technicians employed in repetitive and disqualifying functions, of the employees forced daily to “cover organizational gaps” due to staff shortages. The ruling sends a precise message: the company organization cannot structurally burden workers with tasks that are inferior to their professionalism, especially when this happens in a stable and systematic way. Because even a “small” demotion, if repeated every day for years, ceases to be small.

Read Domenico Tambasco’s other editorials