Abstract

The paper is focused on legislative reforms about fixed-term employment contract, both in the private and public sector. The author underlines the choice to state expressively in the law that employment contracts of indefinite duration are the general form of employment relationship and describes new rules introduced in 2007 to prevent abuse arising from the use of successive fixed-term employment contracts, showing their limits and doubting their real effectiveness. With regard to the public sector, the author analyses, on the one hand, the legislative choice to strictly limit the use of flexible contracts, questioning if this ruling is mainly due to the will to control temporary employment rather than limit public expenditure; on the other hand, the paper examines the decision of the legislator not to modify the provision - acting for public employees only - that prohibits an abusive succession of fixed-term contracts from being converted into an indefinite employment contract.