Arbeitnehmerpartizipation im Arbeitsschutz und ihre kollektivvertragliche Ausgestaltung am Beispiel Italiens

Collective agreements on workers’ participation on health and safety are less common in Germany than in Italy, where this kind of legal arrangements are an essential and established element of the Italian collective bargaining approach. Some of reasons for the popularity of these agreements lie in their adaptability to changes and flexibility to industry sector specifics. In this work, Italian regulatory models that also could be useful for German actors have been identified and explained in the context of the Italian health and safety system as well as collective labour law. In addition, this collective bargaining approach is also challenging for the transposition of European directives to national law. Italian collective agreements cannot be a primary legal source for transposition of European health and safety directives. Consequently, the Italian legislator was forced to dovetail statutory law with collective agreements in order to balance the EU legal requirements of generally binding minimum legal standards including their effective enforcement with the leeway granted to the collective bargaining parties.