Lettori Win Again But Fear Italian Houdini Tactics
by Domenico Paccitti
SOME 1,500 FOREIGN-language lecturers, or lettori,
who teach their mother-tongue in over sixty Italian universities
recently had their fourth job discrimination case against
the Italian government upheld at the European Court of Justice
(ECJ) in Luxembourg.
On 26th June the ECJ ruled that lettori at sample
universities in Milan, Pisa, Rome, Naples, Basilicata and
Palermo were being denied the same labor rights as Italian
nationals. But despite their victory, the lettori,
who were represented by the European Commission, and about
one third of whom teach English, remain sceptical of ever
obtaining genuine justice.
The lettori won their first case back in 1989, when
the ECJ found their fixed-term contracts to be discriminatory,
and ordered conversion to open-ended ones. The Italian government
not only failed to implement the Court’s decision correctly,
but by sleight of hand actually downgraded the lettori from
teaching staff to technicians.
The fiercest reaction came from David Petrie, a dogged Scotsman
who left his native Dumbarton 15 years ago to teach English
at the University of Verona. The trade union, Allsi, which
he formed in order to defend lettori’s rights and which
he now chairs, boasts 500 members.
Petrie told Adjunct Advocate: “If the Italian state
does not order its universities to conform to EU law, the
next step will be for the European Commission to take them
back to Court with a view to levying weekly, monthly or daily
fines. Italy cannot risk this.”
Allsi is currently preparing a detailed report on universities
that are failing in their obligations. Some universities,
like Florence, says Petrie, accepted through their “leftist
corporate trade unions” to be downgraded to technical and
administrative staff in exchange for a wage deal.
In August, Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi agreed to a
proposal by the Italian rectors’ Conference to complete the
lettori’s downgrading by inviting them to participate
in open public examinations for better paid jobs as technicians,
which could leave them vulnerable to easy sacking.
But Petrie, whose trade union is committed to having his
members’ full rights as teaching staff respected, says that
he will advise against accepting the offer of a higher short-term
wage agreement on the grounds that they will lose out on seniority
payments and pensions.
Irishman Henry Rodgers, who teaches English at Rome’s La
Sapienza university-Europe’s largest with 170,000 students-bears
the distinction of being the only lettore to have addressed
a Member State parliament about the discrimination issue.
The Irish government then successfully lobbied the European
Commission to open the infringement proceedings which resulted
in the June ruling.
Reviewing the lettori’s long-running battle against
discrimination, Rodgers said: “Italy has shown an almost Houdini-like
ability to evade ECJ rulings. Clearcut verdicts have been
deliberately misinterpreted, causing us to return to the Court
for further refinements of its judgements. Italian universities,
which one might reasonably have expected to exemplify and
transmit the European ideal, have instead engaged in a well-documented
discrimination which totally flouts EU law and runs counter
to the goal of integration.”
