On October 29th, the twelfth lecture of the "2020 Global Anti-Epidemic Return to Work Lecture Series" was held online, hosted by the University of Florence and co-sponsored by the Labor Relations Branch of the China Society for Human Resources Development. William Chiaromonte, researcher of  labor law at the University of Florence School of Law, was invited as the guest speaker to give a lecture on the topic of "The Impact of Health Emergencies of the New Epidemic on Italian Labor Law". More than 160 experts, scholars, teachers and students from inside and outside the university listened to the online lecture.

In the lecture, researcher Chiaromonte, based on his own scientific research and teaching experience, expounded the government's measures to respond to the spread and control of the epidemic and analyzed the current situation of the Italian labor market from the perspective of Italian labor law. He interpreted more than 240 decrees, regulations and decrees issued by the Italian government, and put forward new thinking on whether the adjustment of labor law system can be normalized under the state of emergency. He pointed out that in the face of conflicts of interest between the right to health and other basic rights, the Italian government chose to give priority to safeguarding the right to health. As the number of people infected with the epidemic rose again, the Italian government began to implement new epidemic prevention laws, further tightened prevention measures. The government has promulgated a series of laws and regulations such as the principle of maximum feasibility, safety guarantees, rules for handling work-related injuries infected with the virus, protection of workers’ privacy, prohibition of layoffs or collective layoffs due to economic reasons during the epidemic, protection of people’s income, and management of illegal foreign employees. The fundamental system of labor law has had a significant impact.

In the concluding speech, Professor Shen Jianfeng, dean of the School of Law of our school, expressed his gratitude to researcher Chiaromonte for his wonderful lecture. He said that this lecture has a clear structure and rich information. From the perspective of problem-oriented and functionalist comparative law research, it is more urgent and important to conduct comparative labor law research under the epidemic situation. The risks faced by the legitimization of response measures in the state of emergency and whether the special regulations of labor law can be normalized are issues worthy of attention and consideration in the future. During the talk session, Professor Xiao Zhu, the deputy dean of the School of Law of our school, focused on the systematic response rules of the labor law level under emergency conditions as well as the new modes of flexible employment and employment under the epidemic, such as shared employees and remote working. He shared insights on the legal adjustment model, the expansion of government power and the normalization of specialization mechanisms under emergency conditions.

     

This lecture was a successful conclusion to our university's "2020 Global Anti-Epidemic, Return to Work and Labor Relations Lecture ".  Over the past four months, our university has invited experts and scholars from 12 countries and regions to give lectures, 21 Chinese experts to preside over the deliberations, and more than 1,800 people to attend and discuss the lectures, which effectively promoted in-depth exchanges between academic and practical circles in the field of labor under the epidemic. Our lecture has gained high praise from universities, academic institutions, experts and scholars as well as teachers and students at home and abroad, and further expanded the academic exchanges of our university. We have made a useful attempt to promote the internationalization of our university's academic disciplines during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.

William Chiaromonte is a labor law researcher and associate professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Florence, and vice chairman of the law degree program. He lectures on labor law and advanced labor law courses. He serves as the editor-in-chief of the academic journal "Labor Law and Industrial Relations Law Report" and a member of the editorial committee of "Restatement of Social Security Law" and "Law, Immigration and Citizenship". In 2004, he received a master's degree in European labor studies from the University of Florence and the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. In 2009, he received a PhD in European Social Law from the University of Macerada. His thesis on labor and social rights of migrant workers won the Marco Biagi Youth Research Award from the Marco Biagi Foundation (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia University) in recognition of his work Best Italian Doctoral Dissertation in Law (2010 edition).

(Office of International Exchange and Cooperation (Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Office))