The amount of the monthly remuneration reported in each pay slip issued to employees is not always the same, given that these sums are made up of several elements, which may change from one reference period to the other, including – for various reasons – the number of hours worked. Especially when many employees are staffed, recording this data correctly can become complex: for this reason, the employer should acquire specific instruments capable of ensuring such a result. As of today, Italy does not have a regulation entirely dedicated to registering employees’ attendance within the workplace, as well as to how to keep the relevant data thus recorded. The so-called “Single Employment Ledger” (“LUL”) seems to be the only tool capable of satisfying such a necessity and correctly taking care of the working hours executed by each employee staffed, thus offering a complete framework of the daily company life. The LUL was established in 2008, and every employer in Italy is compelled to draft it and correctly keep it (with just a few exceptions, such as public administrations and domestic work employers). It shall be completed with information regarding any employees and their working performances under one employer, including a monthly calendar indicating the exact number of working hours executed, those performed under overtime regime or paid leave, or any other leave or permit used by the employees. Although the monthly filling out and the storage of the LUL are mandatory for Italian employers, it seems that its features are insufficient to ascertain the exact and objective daily accountability of any worked (or non-worked) hours by each company’s employee. Indeed, when a Spanish works council required the European Court of Justice (in C-55/2018) to express an opinion on a bank, as an employer, equipped itself with a transparent and objective recording system of the employees’ attendance, the EU judges defined the features of a tool that could be useful to such ends. The above led to the issuance of the ECJ judgement on May 14th, 2019, within which the provisions of the European Directive no. 2003/88 have been taken into consideration, as the latter aims at setting a basic regulation for the safeguard of employees’ rights to better life and work conditions, through the harmonisation of the national legislations on working hours. More specifically, the judges stated that “a national law which does not provide for an obligation to have recourse to an instrument that enables the objective and reliable determination of the number of hours worked each day and each week is not capable of guaranteeing […] the effectiveness of the [mentioned] rights […] since it deprives both employers and workers of the possibility of verifying whether those rights are complied with and is therefore liable to compromise the objective of that directive, which is to ensure better protection of the safety and health of workers”. In light of the brief review above, it is worth underlying how the Italian lawmaker did not set out a proper obligation following the European principle of law enucleated in the 2019 judgement. Therefore, until both the Italian and EU institutions do not expressly impose an obligation to provide at least similar instructions for employers – also considering the latest regimes under which it is now possible to perform working duties, as, for instance, remote working mode – the LUL will remain the only helpful tool to keep track of the employees’ presence within the workplace, at least in Italy.
