Disability and labor law. Certainties, disappointments and hopes in the italian legal experience

Abstract

The delegated Law on Disability (No 227/2021), although hasty and incomplete, is important for adopting implementing measures that meet actual needs and also improve labor law in any case. In Italian labor law, this is not the first intervention. The labor legislation - starting with Law No. 68 of 1999 and ending with the recent Legislative Decree No. 105/2022 - conforms to international and European principles as well as the implementation of constitutional values on the centrality of the person and his dignity. They point to "targeted" placement on the abilities of people with disabilities and the appropriateness of the workplace, horizontal subsidiarity with the involvement of social enterprises, the prohibition of discrimination, and the promotion of equal opportunities through reasonable accommodation. However, things are not going so well either de facto or from the regulatory point of view, where the critical aspects of the general structure of labor market rules and public services also spill over. There are, in fact, strong disadvantages-if not genuine discrimination-in the world of employment of people with disabilities: gender, generational, type and degree of disability, geographic. The authors therefore point to the delegated decree that could also fill the gaps in the delegation, taking advantage of even recondite regulatory spaces. The basic idea is to refine the tools already in place (especially reasonable accommodations and involvement of social associations) and continue the cultural challenge to break down the stereotypes that still plague our society.