The time of respite, in the Italian legal system protects the workers who are in cases of illness, accident, pregnancy and childbirth: situations in which the employment relations is suspended and the employee is entitled to a compensation established by law (Art. 2110 Italian Civil Code).

This protection does not stretches to infinity, but passed a period of time, the time of respite, pursuant to art. 2110 of the Civil Code, the employer may terminate the employment contract.

However, this principle would be to the clash with the Jobs Act that does not include dismissal for overcoming of the grace period: we can deduce, therefore, that the dismissal for exceeding period behave qualifies as illegal and entitles the worker to compensation only, and not also, to reinstatement.

The Labour Chamber of the Supreme Court with the sentence no. 7433 of 14 April 2016, stated the principle that: ” that there is no case-law that legitimizes the worker to arbitrarily choose which leave period nor impute to the sick leave, these are events that must be coordinated with the needs of the proper conduct of work, and the granting of which is a prerogative due to the organizational power of the employer (the Supreme Court no. 10352/2008) ;

must be considered the prevailing interest of the worker to the continuation of the relationship (Cassation n.5078 / 2009), so the worker has the right to replace the disease to take vacation days, matured in order to suspend the time period behave, then they weigh on the employer, which is generally reserved the right to choose their vacation time, demonstrate that it took into account the important and basic interest of the worker the possible loss of jobs due to expiry of the grace period. ”

So it would be desirable to operate a balance:

– On the one hand recognizing a reasonable “spatium deliberandi” on the part of the employer in order to evaluate the convenience and usefulness of the resumption of the employment relationship;

– the respect of illnes’s periods, in which the employee may fully recover its psychophysical energies and resume the service. Classic cases in which bind the employer to dismiss the employee after the grace period should be to undermine those interests that the system tries to protect.