Staff-Leasing in the Temporary Employment System in the Light of EU Directive 104/2008: The Italian Case within the Perspective of the "Reasonable Duration" Problem

A few recent Italian Court rulings stated that a worker hired for a permanent employment contract by temporary-work agency and assigned to a user undertaking under a staff leasing contract (i.e. a contract between user and temporary-work agency permitted under Italian law for an indefinite period) would not enjoy protection mechanisms in terms of the duration of the assignment itself, given that the user is obliged under an obligation with the temporary-work agency only for the duration agreed upon in the contract between user and agency. In this perspective, staff leasing would not exclude precariousness, which would only be prevented by a guarantee of continuity of employment in economic and professional terms. The study discusses the subject of staff leasing from the perspective of European Union law in order to ascertain whether the same formal and temporal constraints need to be applied in the case of permanent staff leasing as in the case of temporary employment.