Have you noticed, when you return from vacation, that your paycheck is “lighter” than usual? You are not alone: ​​it is a phenomenon that involves many employees, which has generated numerous cases in Italian courts, which in truth have been discussed very little outside the narrow circle of insiders. The problem has mainly arisen, in practice, for the staff of companies that manage public transport services, with reference to a whole series of allowances paid during periods of actual work, but not during those of enjoyment of vacation. With the result that, at the end of the month, employees found themselves with paychecks that were much lighter.

This is the case, just to give a few practical examples, of the allowance for absence from residence, the variable part of the allowance for use, the travel allowance, the reduced daily allowance, the travel allowance, the driving allowance and other similar allowances, all ordinarily paid during the year but “disappeared” during the holidays.

This is how the EU defended workers

What is surprising in this story, which has to do with the daily lives of ordinary people, is that the “remedial” intervention comes from someone you don’t expect: the European Union, depicted in the collective imagination as a distant institution, a gray den of bureaucrats focused on abstruse issues such as monetary policies, budgets, interest rates and which instead, in this story, has shown a completely different face. It is to the Court of Justice, in particular, that we owe the decisive intervention: the European judges, in their rulings, have in fact taken care to ensure that employees receive a salary that, during holiday periods, is substantially equivalent to that of working periods.

The reasoning is simple: a concrete reduction in remuneration could dissuade the worker from exercising the right to holidays, which would be in conflict with the provisions of European Union law, and in particular with Article 7 of Directive 2003/88/EC. In fact, according to the Court of Justice, any incentive or solicitation that induces employees to give up holidays is incompatible with the objectives of the European legislator, which aims to ensure that workers benefit from effective rest, also for effective protection of their health and safety. These are principles faithfully applied in Italy by the Court of Cassation which, questioned on the point on numerous occasions, has specified that the remuneration due during the period of enjoyment of annual holidays must include any monetary amount, even of a variable nature, that is connected to the performance of duties and that is related to the personal and professional “status” of the worker.

What the judges decided

What does this mean in practice? It is easy to say: the continuous payment, month after month, of a certain compensation is the most important indicator for being able to argue that the elimination of certain economic items from the remuneration paid during holidays is illegitimate. The conclusion, in many cases brought to the attention of Italian judges, has therefore been the condemnation of employers to integrate the wages of employees, illegitimately reduced during holiday periods.

A final consideration is necessary: ​​there is also a “human” and “social” side of Europe, close to the rights of the people and peoples that compose it. A side that, in this story, has translated into the recognition and defense of a fundamental right of workers, such as the right to pay.

Read other opinions on uisjournal.com