Il contributo costituisce versione rielaborata ed aggiornata dell’intervento svolto al Convegno "Partecipazione conflitto ed eguaglianza nella trama del diritto del lavoro", Pisa, 10-11.4.2025, destinato ai relativi atti in corso di pubblicazione per Pacini Giuridica e ad Editoriale della rivista il Lavoro nelle Pubbliche Amministrazioni, fasc. 3/2025.

Collective labour relations have constituted one of the central pillars of the reform of public sector employment in Italy, significantly contributing to the consolidation, within public administrations as well, of fundamental safeguards for workers and, at the same time, to the modernization of administrative action and the enhancement of the efficiency of public services. The system of trade union relations in the public sector, which is extensively regulated by statutory law, displays significant features of differentiation in comparison with the private sector, owing to the introduction of a set of legal constraints aimed, on the one hand, at certifying trade union representativeness and majority-based consent for the purposes of collective bargaining, and, on the other, at ensuring control over personnel expenditure through national and decentralized collective agreements.
The paper examines a number of issues arising from the failure of major and representative trade union organizations to sign national collective labour agreements, focusing on the implications of this phenomenon both for decentralized collective bargaining and for the institutional frameworks of trade union participation. The Author ultimately highlights the need for the prompt restoration of a model of collective labour relations that has, to date, proven effective in terms of trade union democracy and workers’ participation, provided that due account is taken of the regulatory specificities that distinguish the public sector system from that of the private sector.