Tempi di lavoro e salute: prevenzione, partecipazione e contrattazione collettiva dei “time-less workers”

Abstract

This essay explores the role of working time as a safeguard of health and dignity in a context where flexibility risks dissolving the boundaries of protection. The reflection focuses on time-less workers – emerging figures in contemporary labour law, characterised by the absence of predetermined hours and a high degree of autonomy – to explore the meaning and forms of protection in scenarios marked by digitalisation and increasing organisational fragmentation. In this perspective, time is not merely a management variable, but a critical risk factor and social resource, capable of guiding the sustainability of production models. The analysis develops along three lines: the organisational management models referred to in article 30 of Italian Legislative Decree no. 81/2008; certification as a tool for participatory social control; the paradigm of risk-based thinking as the foundation of proactive prevention. Worker participation – reinforced by the recent Italian Law No. 76/2025 – is reinterpreted as a co-design function, while collective bargaining autonomy must be proposed as a means of regulating workers’ time and health, including through the use of virtuous business practices. The challenge is to manage flexibility without sacrificing dignity, restoring the protective and relational function of working time. Finally, the study outlines an evolutionary trajectory for occupational safety law, oriented towards inclusiveness.