The cameras, in certain cases, can directly film the workers. On the other hand, no authorizations or union agreements are required for biometric recognition systems.
As is known, article 4 of law no. 300/70 has been modified by article 23 of Legislative Decree no. 151/2015 and the subsequent article 5, paragraph 2, of the legislative decree no. 185/2016, so that today it is no longer generally forbidden to use remote control instruments (audio-visual and other equipment), but we tend to consider such tools (with union agreement or administrative authorization) as legitimate and usable for purposes related to organizational and production needs such as job security and for the protection of company assets.
Pursuant to the new provision of article 4 cited, the limitations and procedures provided for by the law in question do not apply with reference to those tools that are assigned to workers and used by them to perform work (by way of example, tablets, smartphones, badges, etc.), for the use of which neither trade union nor the alternative administrative authorization are required.
With the circular no. 5 of 19 February 2017, the National Labour Institute, in specifying the procedures to be followed in the preliminary assessment of the conditions legitimating remote monitoring of workers, made it clear that workers may also be monitored while they are carrying out their work provided that this happens accidentally and occasionally and there are justifying reasons for the monitoring (for example protection of "job security" or "company assets").
In this case it is not necessary to prescribe the number of cameras to be installed, their positioning, the adoption of a certain "angle of recovery", or "the darkening of the worker's face". This is because the state of the places and the positioning of goods or production facilities is often the subject of continuous change over time (think for example of the rotation of goods in large-scale retail structures) and therefore an inquiry based on an analysis of these spaces is not very useful given that even in the short term they are not absolutely representative of the work context.
However, the most invasive checks can be legitimized only if specific anomalies pertaining to the safety and protection of company assets exist, when the employer can show that he has previously evaluated and / or tested alternative preventive measures that are less restrictive of workers' rights.
The clarifications of the circular about the use of devices and technologies for the collection and processing of biometric data are very interesting, considering that there is a growing adoption of these techniques that has long been considered legitimate by the Italian Data Protection Authority according to which "the adoption of biometric systems based on the elaboration of fingerprints or the topography of the hand can be allowed to limit access to areas and premises deemed "sensitive" where it is necessary to ensure high and specific levels of safety or to allow the use of dangerous equipment and machinery only to qualified personnel and those specifically assigned to the activities” (see the general provision of the Italian Data Protection Authority (published in Official Gazette No. 280 of 2 December 2014). The ITL clearly states that biometric recognition, installed on machines with the purpose of preventing the unauthorised use of the machine to allow the starting of the machine can be considered an indispensable instrument for “performing work..." and therefore we can overlook this, according to paragraph 2 of article 4 of Law n. 300/1970, both from the agreement with the trade union representatives and from the administrative procedure of an authoritative nature envisaged by the aforesaid standard. (LC)
