Senate gives final green light to bill on cancer workers: leave increases from 6 to 24 months

For employees with cancer or rare and chronic disabling diseases, a series of additional guarantees are coming: the right to keep their job for up to 24 continuous or split months - from the current 180 days - the possibility of redeeming this so-called "waiting period" with the voluntary payment of contributions, the availability of 10 hours of leave per year for visits and analyses in addition to those already recognized by law and collective agreements, priority access to smart working, but only at the end of the leave and if "compatible with the tasks performed".

These are the main innovations contained in the bill 1430 "Provisions concerning job retention and paid leave for medical examinations and treatments for workers suffering from oncological, disabling and chronic diseases", approved unanimously by the Senate definitively and without changes compared to the version approved last March (also unanimously) by the Chamber, after a difficult process started in the previous Legislature and conditioned by budgetary needs. The new law originates from the legislative initiative of the opposition (Debora Serracchiani, PD) and had Elena Murelli (Lega) as its rapporteur in the Senate, obtaining a bipartisan convergence on two issues, that of the right to work and the right to health, constitutionally guaranteed.

The provision on “leave” also comes as a natural corollary to the law on oncological oblivion , a milestone in the protection of civil rights in the country, strongly desired by patient associations and fully supported by Parliament, created to guarantee broad protection to people living with cancer. We are talking about approximately 3.6 million people - one in three of whom are of working age - who, thanks to the chronicity of the disease and even if still undergoing therapy, have the desire and need to continue to be socially active, including at work.

Yet, precisely on the issue of the possibility of reconciling work rhythms, efficiency and management of therapies, check-ups and "fatigue", the law on leave is still "timid" with respect to the recognized rights and risks not being able to counteract that financial toxicity that the Aiom (Association of Medical Oncology) estimates characterizes 26% of patients already at the beginning of therapy with a worsening of 35% of the quality of life and a consequent increase in the risk of death equal to a good 20%. All this adds to the burden of the pathology and the new law currently intervenes only partially. First of all because absence from work, even if from now on it will be guaranteed for up to two years, also means giving up remuneration, aggravated by the impossibility of carrying out other activities even occasionally. An element that risks rowing against the full protection of workers. Yet, the priority of counteracting the phenomenon of abandoning the workplace for the need to seek treatment is among the indications contained in the National Oncology Plan 2023-2027.

For public or private employees who have been recognized as having a disability of at least 74%, the new law provides the possibility of requesting continuous or fractional leave of up to 24 months. During this period, the job is maintained but there is no right to remuneration nor can one carry out - a "rigidity" opposed by the opposition and by a large part of the associations - another work activity. Furthermore, this period is not computed in seniority or for social security purposes, even if, as mentioned, there is the possibility of buying it out. At the end of the leave, the worker is assigned "precedence right" on smart working if compatible with the duties.