This year the weekends are eating up the remaining bridges before the end of the year: except December 8th, which is a Monday. All that remains is to wait for the Christmas holidays. But can a holiday really be enough to repair the damage caused by the stress that work inflicts on us every day? If we ask the Italian judges, the answer is clear: no. Because stress doesn’t always leave visible bruises, but its effects are real, profound and now also legally relevant.

Work stress: when the judge says enough

A recent ruling by the Court of Naples (16 June 2025, number 4811) has opened an important window. It concerns a security guard, employed for only seven months in an inhumane working context: 13-14 hour shifts, no weekly rest, no private life. Continuous wear and tear, which the judge deemed sufficient to recognize damage from psycho-physical wear and tear. There is no need for clinical diagnoses or medical certificates: the violation of the legal limits on working hours is already, in itself (the ancients would have said in re ipsa), an injury to health and an offense to the dignity of the person.

If the shock came from Naples, it is in Milan that the jurisprudence has brought the issue to an even more advanced level. The Milanese Court, with sentence number 663 of 11 April 2025 on a case involving some drivers of local public transport, valorised European social law (in particular, article 31 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union) and liquidated the damage by referring not to income (which risks creating inequalities), but to daily subjective suffering.

That invisible wear and tear that destroys health

Every day of overtime abuse? It is worth 27 euros, the amount indicated by the Milanese tables for compensation for the so-called “moral damage”. It’s not much, but it’s a strong principle: the suffering of the worker deserves protection according to objective and uniform criteria, not linked to individual income, to prevent the value of dignity from ending up depending on the wallet of those who suffer it.

Can work be a place of suffering? – by Domenico Tambasco

To reinforce this principle, both the judges of Naples and those of Milan have forcefully reiterated a firm point: the maximum limits of working hours are not a simple contractual option, but mandatory rules placed indispensably to protect health. It does not matter whether the abuse was voluntarily accepted or even just tacitly tolerated: that availability, say the Courts, is legally irrelevant, considering the evident contractual imbalance typical of the working relationship, which exerts a conditioning pressure on the will of individuals. Dignity cannot be traded, not even with consent.

Too much work: because dignity is not for sale

The Supreme Court of Cassation also recently intervened in the “debate” on wear and tear from psycho-physical wear and tear, with ordinance number 20249 of 19 July 2025, recognizing that there is no “automatic” compensation, but opening up to the test of presumptions: in serious and repeated cases such as, for example, when the ten-minute daily break provided for by article 8 of the legislative decree is not guaranteed for over ten years 66/2003, it can be assumed that the damage is there. A small glimmer that adds to a growing trend: recognizing that a sick work organization can break people, and that this has a cost, human rather than economic.

Lighter salary when you are on holiday: how to get your money back – by Domenico Tambasco

It’s a sign that something is changing. Technology and the economy have long dictated the law, sacrificing everything – even health – on the altar of productivity. But today, thanks to the “fight for rights”, the person returns to the center. The message from the courts is simple but revolutionary: it is not acceptable to wear out workers to make the machinery turn better. Dignity cannot be bought. And he doesn’t sacrifice himself.