Senate approves delegation law on wages and collective bargaining

At a glance

• Senate approved Bill No. 957/2025 delegating wage and bargaining reforms to the government.
• The proposal abandons the idea of a statutory minimum wage.
• Focus shifts to enforcing minimum pay based on widely applied national collective agreements.
• Employers must reference applicable contracts to ensure compliance with Article 36 of the Constitution.
• The government has six months to implement the law via legislative decrees.

On 23 September 2025, the Italian Senate approved Bill No. 957/2025, a delegation law granting the government authority to reform wage structures and collective bargaining procedures. The law moves away from introducing a statutory minimum wage and instead aims to strengthen the role of collective bargaining.

The key objective is to ensure that all workers receive at least the minimum overall economic treatment defined in the most widely applied national collective labour agreements. For each worker category, the government is tasked with identifying the relevant contracts to serve as benchmarks for fair pay, in line with Article 36 of the Italian Constitution.

The law also extends these minimum standards to workers not currently covered by collective agreements. Additionally, it introduces transparency measures, such as mandatory reporting of the applied collective agreement code via the Uniemens data flow.

Further provisions include:

• Incentives for timely contract renewals.
• Promotion of decentralised bargaining.
• Mandatory recognition of minimum economic treatment in subcontracting, aligned with the most applied national contracts.

The government now has six months to issue one or more legislative decrees to implement these changes.