L'assemblea ex art. 20 St. lav.: titolarità del potere di convocazione nell'evoluzione della giurisprudenza e dell'attività sindacale

The right of freedom of assembly is one of the key legal institutes amidst the ones listed in the Title III of the Law No. 300 of 1970 (Statuto dei Lavoratori), aimed to promote and sustain the trade unions' presence on workplaces in Italy. Nonetheless, the evolution of the forms in which workers' organisations represent employees, and the various events that affected the unity of action of the most relevant trade unions during the last decades, gave rise to a plurality of points of view relating to the right interpretation of the Article 20 of Law No. 300 of 1970 in its paragraph concerning the power to convene trade union assemblies. This juridical issue is relevant, since it could have implications not only with reference to the exercising of the right of freedom of assembly itself, but also to the general functioning of the workers' representative bodies. This contribution traces a general framework related to the application of Article 20 of Law No. 300 of 1970, and focuses the attention on the case-law debate concerning the belonging of the power to convene the trade union assembly, in order to provide experts and practical operators with an outline of the state-of-the-art of this topic.