Telecom Italia has no right to fire its employee Carlo T., even though he's responsable for having spent 1,500 euros in private SMS on his work phone.

 

This is what the Supreme Court sentences, in total contraposition with the decision taken by a Naples court in 2002. 

Thus it seems that sending 13,000 messages in 10 months (between January and October 2000) at the company's expense cannnot be considered cause for dismissal.

 

"Employees must be treated in the same way": this is the justification the Court offered for its sentence.

 

In fact, in the past Telecom Italia had discipined its dependents, for similar cases, with softer penalties: either by cutting down three days' salary or by subtracting the cost of text messages from wage packets.