Discrimination in Italian universities

FOREIGN LECTURERS – LETTORI

 

David Petrie

For 18 years Italian universities, bankrolled by their paymaster the Italian state, have been cavilling outside and inside courts, flouting European single market rules which prohibit discrimination based on nationality.

Italy operates a two-tier system of employment in its universities where discrimination based on nationality is the rule.

ALLSI was legally founded on 30 September 1997 to combat the abuse and unlawful discrimination in over 20 Italian universities. ALLSI is now the largest trade union and pressure group representing and advising migrant teachers in Italy and in other EU member states.

“The authorities are trying to “disappear” us. On 13 March 1987 a local court judged the quality and quantity of my work to be equivalent to a category of associate professor. This judgement was upheld by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation.  Since then my name has been cancelled from the internal phone book and the faculty vademecum. I was kicked off the examining boards and barred from following student dissertations. On 2 October 1996, I was fired along with 13 other foreign lecturers for 'insubordination'. We were all reinstated 3 years later by the Supreme Court. Since 1987 I have seen my Italian associate professors' salaries double through the automatic payment of increments for years of service, while myself and other non-Italian colleagues are still awaiting parity through the courts”.

David Petrie is the chairman of ALLSI. He teaches at the University of Verona, which was the subject of the first of 3 European Parliamentary resolutions on human rights. See EU Parliament Resolution B4-0968/95.