Last month, the Italian Court of Cassation overturned an appeal by the auto industry giant Fiat to fire an employee for watching porn during his lunch break. The case dates back to 2010, when the defendant, identified as Giuseppe Z., claimed to have “merely caught a glimpse” of a porn film called Red Light while on his lunch break.
Giuseppe was initially found guilty, but that verdict was overturned by the court of Palermo and upheld by the Court of Cassation on October 14. The court ruled that because the alleged glimpse of the film was not a habitual act that interfered with his work, Fiat had no right to terminate his employment.
The case made reverberations across all channels of written news media, with sources such as the Daily Mail, Huffington Post and Telegraph flashing headlines such as, “Italian court rules that employees must be allowed to watch porn during their lunch breaks” and, “Finally, Court OKs Watching Porn On Lunch Break.”
These headlines make for tempting clickbait, but they are misleading. In reality, an Italian worker who breaks a company’s rules of conduct can legally be sacked, but in this case the court found the defendant had simply made an honest mistake.
Italy: Progressive, but not insane
This is not to say that Italian workers do not enjoy a wide array of labor protections. These protections extend far beyond anything that workers in the United States might enjoy in their workplaces—save for the occasional Environmental Protection Agency office porn scandal. This worker autonomy is enforced by the Italian Constitution, and the fine print of Italian labor protection laws make it difficult to terminate an employee in general.
Established in 1946 by a Socialist parliamentary majority, the first line of the Constitution of the Italian Republic reads, “Italy is a Democratic Republic, based on labor.” Title III of the constitution established fundamental protections for workers, including the right of women to receive equal pay for equal work, the right to strike and form unions, and the right of workers to collaborate in the management of the companies they work for.
While media sensationalism may tend to focus on the libertine qualities of government executives and corporate elites who surf porn while the rest of us languish in sanitized workplaces, the truth is that porn remains a basis for termination the world over, even in lusty Italy.
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