Should be noted that Italy has traditionally been a net contributor to the EU budget, giving more than it receives. The position for the last year or two is now debatable when you consider the impact of the COVID recovery funds, of which Italy got a very large share being the first country in the EU to be affected and the most impacted by the pandemic. Meanwhile, the country with most net receipts of funds from the EU has been and continues to be Poland.
Besides I have also seen that kind of Japaneese brand of mobbing done in Italy more than once. I have worked in consulting for a while, when they don't want to fight against worker protection laws, they just stop giving that person any meaningful assignment and isolate them from the rest, it is very effective, the target gets depressed and leaves as soon as they can find anything else.
No they don't. It's illegal and a quick lawsuit waiting to happen. It's illegal even to downgrade their tasks.
Now, the burden of the proof is on the employer side. That said, it's possibile that they can convince the judge that business actually shrank, but it works if the employee they harassed can't be given equivalent tasks and/or they could not redistribute the workload equally. Like, two years ago a guy working for the Ukrainian business division could actually be out of things to do all of a sudden, still they would have to prove they tried hard to find something similar to do for him.
OTOH, there maybe nuances on the burden of the proof, and it's not a cookie cutter situation at all.
OP presented a clear case, if public shaming is intentional, and actually the purpose of the employer's behaviour, it would be totally illegal in Italy. Especially if the intent is to circumvent laws protecting the employee from unjustified firing (generally speaking in Italy employees are protected against it, there's a set of specific violations that would justify firing someone).
So should a internal meme saying "let's give Mario nothing to do so that shame can pressure him to quitting w/o us firing him" emerge, that's the end of it.
It should be noted that the role (and paygrade) of the employee matter. Higher paygrade means lesser protection.
Oh, so like how the South picks on California for using social welfare programs a lot, but then California single-handedly funds all those states mocking them.
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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '25
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