The Court of Cassation, in sentence no. 10056 published today, 14 April 2023, once again reiterates a principle that must be kept in mind in negotiations aimed at the renewal of collective agreements: if a behavior is included among the infractions that the collective agreement punishes with dismissal for just cause, the provision is not binding the Judge, who remains free to evaluate whether, despite the “scale of values formulated by the social partners”, that behavior is subsumable or not within the art. 2119 of the Civil Code. Conversely, if a fact which would constitute just cause according to the law is punished by the collective agreement with a conservative sanction, the provision is binding for the Judge and, indeed, constitutes a real “limit” to its “independent assessment of greater severity”. Therefore, the provisions of collective agreements, even in disciplinary matters, can only operate in favor of the worker: clauses that provide for a more serious sanction than that applicable by law are irrelevant, while clauses that provide for a less serious sanction are binding, with consequent reinstatement in the workplace of the employee who has committed objectively intolerable acts. The principle of law, which pertains to the subsumption phase following the verification of the material fact, makes clear the relevance of both the formulation of the disciplinary sections of collective agreements and their subsequent interpretation