THE SUNDAY POST

December 11, 2005-12-13

By Adam Docherty

Scots tell Italian government to ‘get lost’ in profs pay war

Two Scots lecturers are locked in a David v Goliath battle with the Italian government over equal pay.

Professor David Petrie, from Dumbarton, is an English language and literature lecturer at Verona University.

For 18 years he’s been leading a campaign to win foreign lecturers equal rights with their Italian counterparts.

There are about 450 foreign lecturers in Italy, known as “lettori”. They don’t enjoy the same wages, pension plans and rewards for years of service Italian lecturers do, even though they have a heavier workload.

With the help of Professor John Young, who teaches the same subjects at Milan State University and is originally from Auchterarder, Professor Petrie recently took the case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg.

Their legal team has urged judges to impose fines of over £200,000 a day on the Italian government for its alleged failure to implement several previous judgements that found it was breaching EU rules prohibiting discrimination based on nationality.

Professor Petrie is confident of victory. He explained, “The ECJ has already found against the Italians four times. It is unlikely now to say, ‘Sorry, we have made a mistake in our previous judgements, so we won’t bother fining you’.”

In January the ECJ will deliver its opinion and the final ruling will be made in April.

“This litigation is about the failure of the Italian government to enforce previous rulings against them,” Professor Petrie added. “In 2001 the ECJ said Italy wasn’t respecting its Treaty obligations.

“At that point the Italian state was obliged to alter its legislation and practices to solve the problem. They didn’t do that so they have been hauled up in court again.

“Following the 2001 ruling our employers said, ‘You guys have won your court case, you’ve beaten us in the ECJ. But we have a surprise for you – we’re moving you to the laboratory as a technician!’

“I said ‘get lost we’re not going, so they fired twelve of us. That meant I was out of woprk for three years. But I was reinstated and paid damages by the Italian Supreme Court and in the meantime there have been a couple of libel cases, both of which I won.”

Italian university lecturers teach for two hours and 15 minutes per week, for 30 weeks of the year. Most of the teaching is done by the lettori who do about twelve hours a week in the classroom and six hours of office and tutorial work.

In 1997 Professor Petrie (54) formed an independent trade union called Association of Foreign Lecturers in Italy to campaign against the stance taken by the Italian state.

In the last four months it has won individual cases in the Universities of Venice, Rome and Padua. The average payout for the individuals concerned was £205,000, plus a doubling of their salaries, with pensions also brought into line.

According to Professor Petrie one of the main reasons the Italian state is ‘cutting up rough’ is because of the huge sums it may have to pay out. There are about 450 lettori wo are directly affected by this litigation.