Contract Procurement in Italian Labour Law
The podcast that explores the world of work through the lens of employment law.
Curated by Attorneys Stefano Trifirò, Mariapaola Rovetta Arici and Jacopo Moretti – Trifirò & Partners Avvocati.
In today’s episode, we address a topic that is both highly topical and particularly sensitive for professionals involved in HR management and employment law advisory work: the genuineness of outsourcing arrangements, the use of so-called “sham cooperatives,” secondments, and the related risk of insubordination.
The central question is deceptively simple: when does an outsourcing arrangement cease to be genuine?
The issue arises whenever the contractor lacks a truly autonomous structure—in terms of assets, resources and organisational capacity—or when the client company exercises, even de facto, managerial or supervisory powers over the contractor’s workforce. It is within this grey area that a presumption of hetero-direction emerges, with the consequent risk that the arrangement may be reclassified as unlawful labour supply.
A common misconception is that merely engaging a cooperative or a formally independent third party is sufficient to “bulletproof” the transaction. A cooperative, however, is not a legal shield: where it operates as a mere shell and workers perform their duties as de facto employees of the client, the true nature of the relationship inevitably comes to the fore.
During the episode, we also examine a number of operational best practices that companies can adopt to mitigate the most significant risks, including:
-
Assessing the contractor’s actual organisational structure, verifying the existence of its own assets, managerial autonomy and genuine responsibility;
-
Clearly defining operational boundaries, avoiding any form of direct managerial interference by the client in relation to the contractor’s personnel;
-
Appointing a single point of contact on the client side, tasked solely with relational coordination and expressly devoid of any operational management powers over the workers.
These aspects are often underestimated, yet they are essential to ensuring compliance, safeguarding organisational integrity and effectively managing employment law risk.
