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Lettori Win Again But Fear Houdini Tactics The Adjunct Advocate 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." |