On the employment front, the seasonal apprenticeship contract can also be fully used by minors in sectors other than that of the educational path attended, including high school students. This is what the Emilia-Romagna region obtained following a discussion with the Minister of Labor and Social Policies: the positive opinion expressed by the executive allows young people between 15 and 25 years of age to be hired with a first-year apprenticeship contract level.
Just in recent days, the appeal of a mother from Rimini had been discussed, initially relaunched in the Corriere di Romagna, who complained about the impossibility of her 16-year-old son to work in the summer, as an apprentice, due to a restrictive interpretation of the legislation on the matter despite the need for workers from tourism activities, especially seasonal ones.
This is, as explained by the Region itself, “an important recognition, both for families and young people, and for businesses in the tourism-hotel sector which have long raised the issue of summer work for girls and boys; a very widespread practice, especially in the Romagna Riviera which characterizes the experience of many students”. The clarification, it is further underlined, resolves “the knot of the restrictive interpretation of the law, according to which young people who are following a high school education path would have been precluded from having a first experience of accessing the job market with the apprenticeship contract”.
In the wake of the clarification requested by the Region, the National Labor Inspectorate clarified that the seasonal apprenticeship contract can also be stipulated in sectors other than those of the educational path attended by young students, who must be given the opportunity to acquire organizational skills , transversal, human and relational which can represent an asset, not only in relation to training objectives, but more generally as experiential baggage for one’s professional development.
