Transformations in Public Employment from 1990 to Today

Abstract

The article deals with the 1990s reform of public employment, i.e., the employment relationship with public administrations, in Italy. The reform has realized the “privatization of public employment,” so that there was assimilation between the public employment relationship and the private one. The idea was that private regulation is more suitable in order to guarantee efficiency and productivity in Public Administration, giving more powers to public managers. Unluckily, after 20 years, the reform has not achieved the hoped results and for this reason, in 2009, another law was adopted in order to improve efficiency and productivity and to fight absenteeism.

Keywords:

• public employment
• public managers
• public administration reform
• privatization
• productivity
• efficiency

Notes

¹Authoritative powers are given by law and allow public administration to modify, create, or extinguish rights or legitimate expectations of citizens without their agreement.

³Law n. 241 of 1990.

²See: law n. 421/1992 followed by legislative decree (i.e., a law issued by the government under parliamentary delegation) n. 29/1993 and by legislative decree n. 80/1998, which greatly modified the original reform regulation. See, moreover, legislative decree n. 165/2001 that now contains the whole regulation of public employment relationship.

⁴(Cassese, 1997).

⁵(Const. C. 82/2008).

⁶Law n. 15/2009, followed by legislative decree n. 150/2009.

⁷See this important decision of the Supreme Court Cass. SU15 October 2003, n. 15403.

⁸(Romano, 2003).