Question – Dearest editorial staff, I work in a labour agency. One of our workers is Moroccan and his residence papers expired at the end of July 2004. As usual labour department allowed his regular employment only at the end of past December and subsequently he was allowed to sign another contract. He could give in his expired permit and the receipt he was issued when he applied to papers’ renewal.
April 2005 is almost over and our worker was not released papers because his labour contracts last less than one year. What should I do?
The firm he is working for cannot employ him for one whole year. Should I fire him once actual contract is over? What should he do then? He for sure won’t be anymore employed since his papers expired too much ago. Can I have his labour contract extended? Thank you very much.
Answer – We chose to answer to this answer not because we are willing to help such activities, which do not safeguard workers, but because we the question refers to the chance a migrant citizen may have of regularly living in Italy. This question also refer to the novelties introduced by the new rules for the enforcement of Bossi-Fini law.
In other words we are being asked: is lodging’s certification necessary to all non-EU workers that need to sign a new labour contract even if they already regularly live in Italy? Is it mandatory only if employment is a consequence of flows decree?
These questions refer to all kinds of employment not only to temporary and casual labour.
Some considerations
Art. 13 makes us think that housing availability needs to be verified only when papers are renewed and not any time labour and residence contracts are signed.
Examples
If migrant citizens find new employment during papers validity time, they will only need to sign a new residence contract, which employers need to sign as well, and send it to Prefecture.
Vice versa, if new employment comes together with papers renewal, housing availability must be proved.
There’s a problem of interpretation, though. What does it mean self-certification? It seems that employers just need to declare under their own responsibilities that lodging is available.
Self-certification
The word self-certification is ruled over by law. DPR 445/2000 states that acts and circumstances can only be self-stated. Circumstances that are already known by qualified authorities.
This seems to allow the interpretation that employers can self-certificate housing availability when residence papers are under renewal only if flats/houses were already verified by qualified officers and offices.
Employers are not allowed to self-certification in case lodgings have never been evaluated. This is the strictest interpretation of law. We shall see whether future memorandums will eventually make the matter clearer.
At the end of our answer, we can state that during papers’ validity, housing certificates do not need to be handed in if new labour contracts are signed, whereas this is mandatory when contracts are signed during residence papers’ renewal.