British lecturers suing Italy for £300,000 in ‘lettori’ dispute

Two lecturers are seeking damages of more than €350,000 (£297,000) from Italy in the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR) over a long-running dispute over unequal pay for British academics in the country.

The Association of Foreign Lecturers in Italy (ALLSI) has accused Italian courts of “playing ping-pong” with British lecturers who have been pursuing unequal pay claims for three decades.

Now two British lecturers, 62-year-old Robert Coates and 74-year-old Dermot Costello, are seeking €351,650 damages for violation of the right to have a fair trial and a fair trial within a reasonable time, because the University of Brescia has refused to grant them equal pay in line with Italian lecturers, despite a 1996 ruling by the Labour Court of Brescia instructing it to do so.

The escalation is the latest in the long-running dispute affecting about 1,000 foreign language assistants, known as lettori. It began when Italy passed a law granting tenure to Italian nationals teaching in universities, while giving lettori annual contracts renewable for five years and allowing them to be paid less than their Italian counterparts.

Over the course of the dispute, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled in favour of the British lecturers a record six times, to little avail. A seventh case is pending.

A 2011 Italian law, named after former higher education minister Mariastella Gelmini, complicated matters further. It sought to settle the dispute by granting back pay and pensions to lettori while introducing cuts on future pay. But lecturers complained that it resulted in their pay being reduced by up to 60 per cent.

Now the lecturers have now taken the case to the ECHR and are seeking damages of €140,000 for Mr Coates and €142,811 for Mr Costello for unpaid wages, after they requested that the Brescia Court of Appeal and the Italian Court of Cassation put a stay on proceedings and refer the case to the CJEU.

However, the Court of Cassation – which is bound by the EU Treaty – refused to refer the case to the CJEU, which forms the basis of the lecturers’ case lodged at Strasbourg over the “illegitimacy” of the retroactive Gelmini law along with the unreasonably lengthy duration of the legal process, their association said.

They started legal proceedings in 1994, and Mr Coates and Mr Costello are consequently seeking a further €14,400 for unreasonable duration, in addition to €35,079 in legal costs and fees.

David Petrie, chair of ALLSI, said he had met with the British ambassador to Italy to express the association’s concerns, and said he would be seeking a meeting with the UK minister for relations with the EU, Nick Thomas-Symonds, to discuss the matter further.

“The Italian courts have been filibustering and cavilling, playing ping-pong with my colleagues for three decades, bouncing them back and forth into eight different courts,” Mr Petrie said.

“Successive Italian governments have shown a willingness to introduce retroactive legislation in order to influence the outcome of scores of legal cases that are pending. Alarm bells should be ringing at the offices of the European Union: Italy, a founder member of the EU, is turning its back on a rules-based legal order that is essential to the functioning of the European Union.”

Lorenzo Picotti, who is representing the lecturers, said the case needed to be referred to the ECHR because Italian judges “are not applying European Union law nor the judgments of the Court of Justice”.

“It is essential to get a judgment from the Strasbourg Court, as the guarantor of the rights of citizens, who can directly appeal under the Convention and get a pronouncement on this persistent unfairness,” Professor Picotti said.

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com