Co-funded by the European Union

Italy: new collective agreement signed for the sector of domestic work

  • The text contains important updates and simplification measures compared to the previous collective agreement, on categories, qualifications, organisation of work, and salaries.

The collective agreement for domestic work in Italy was renewed in September 2020 and entered into force on 1st October 2020. It was signed by the sectoral employers’ organisations Fidaldo and Domina and the sectoral trade union organisations Filcams Cgil, Fisascat Cisl, UILTuCS and Federcolf. The sector counts 860,000 formal workers while the total number of domestic workers, including informal workers, is estimated 2 million.

With regards to wages, it foresaw a monthly increase of EUR12 for the “average B Super level” as of 1st January 2021, plus an allowance for workers assisting children up to 6 years old or not self-sufficient persons.  Workers with specific qualifications will also be granted an additional allowance of up to EUR10 per month.

The agreement introduces the joint liability of family members, spouses and persons in civil partnership and, aimed at improving working conditions.

On training and upskilling, the agreement allows full-time open-ended employees with a seniority of at least 6 months with the same employer to benefit from 40 hours per year of paid leave to attend specific professional training for family assistants, increased to 64 hours if the training is recognized and financed by the bilateral body of the sector, Ebincolf.

The agreement recognises also the particular situation of women victim of violence and introduces rules to decrease the health and safety risks at work.

Fidaldo website reports the social partners positive overview of this agreement, “it intervenes in a very particular phase for the whole world oppressed in the first instance by the pandemic and subsequently by the implications that this has entailed from a socio-economic, financial and, more generally, of people’s well-being perspective”. “The renewal of the collective agreement closes a phase of extreme uncertainty for the category and the sector, gripped by the strong presence of undeclared work and provides the social partners with the best conditions to continue the discussion, even with the institutions, with the common goal of making formal work more attractive in a sector that has given so much in the emergency phase and which is called to play an essential role in our country, in light of the estimates on demographic aging that consider Italy among the longest-lived countries in the world”.