Milan deal offers hope in foreign lecturer pay dispute

A new agreement in Milan settling claims by 33 foreign language university lecturers – known as ‘lettori’ – may offer a pathway to end long-running disputes between these academics and their employers over the fact that non-national foreign language lecturers in Italy have for decades received lower salaries and benefits compared with their Italian counterparts.

The deal involves the full reconstruction of their careers with the State University of Milan (Università degli Studi di Milano Statale, commonly referred to as the ‘Statale’). However, any comprehensive solution will probably rest on an upcoming ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ), expected later this year.

The Milan agreement saw lettori secure a one-of-a-kind €5.4 million (US$5.8 million) compensation deal in November 2023 that ended over three decades of litigation between the university and the lettori it employed.

The deal included compensation for 12 lecturers currently working at the university as well as arrears for those who have retired, said David Petrie, president of the Association of Foreign Lecturers in Italy (Associazione Lettori di Lingua Straniera in Italia – ALLSI) who represents the lettori.

ALLSI renegotiated the terms of an initial supplementary contract (contratto integrative), which had been initially negotiated by national trade unions in 2021.

Petrie said that Milan’ s foreign language lecturers were happy to finally end almost 30 years of costly litigation: “I think almost everyone is happy in Milan. Not many are working now, most have retired, but the 12 still working have now got the compensation they are entitled to, and their salaries have been upped to what the European Union (EU) law says is suitable.”

Resources and drive

Milan’s Statale was able to settle the dispute because it had the resources and drive to do it, Petrie said.

“What the Statale did was a long, almost two-year process, one that the smaller universities will probably not do, nor could do if they wanted to,” he explained.

He said that lettori and their representatives have had to contend with 30 years of changing legislation and ineffectual attempts to put these shifting laws into practice, “resulting in a complicated mess. So, you clearly need dedicated people with vision, talent and capacity, and Milan had that”.

Indeed, the Statale successfully applied for the funds set aside in Interministerial Decree 688 of 24 May (2023), which allocated over €8 million (US$8.6 million) to recompensate Italy’s lettori from the ministries of finance and of universities and research.

At the time, the government said the measure aimed “to put an end to a years-long dispute regarding the figure of former language assistants serving in universities, guaranteeing effectiveness and efficiency in the procedure for reconstructing the previous career of native language assistants”.

A spokesperson for the universities and research ministry told University World News that 17 universities had applied for an undisclosed amount of co-financing for lettori through the inter-ministerial decree. All other universities declared they lacked the conditions to access co-financing, including those that had never employed lettori or ended all litigation with their lettori.

However, for those who did apply, the interministerial decree came with strings attached, said lawyer and professor Lorenzo Picotti, who is legal counsel for ALLSI and some individual lettori and is currently negotiating their cases in the Italian courts.

The application process was short and complex, with universities having just 45 days to apply, he said. This means that universities today wanting to resolve the dispute may no longer be able to apply for these funds, “which are just sitting there”, according to Petrie.

Hope for other universities

“The Milan case is certainly unique, and it is hard to say if it will be replicated by other universities, albeit there is hope,” Picotti said. “To my knowledge the University of Catania has also received some funding through the 2023 Interministerial Decree.”

A spokesperson from the University of Catania confirmed to University World News that it had, following an application made under the decree, received ministerial funding and arranged for payment to 35 former lecturers in November (2023). The university did not disclose the amount, nor did it indicate if the litigation with these lettori was finalised or is still pending.

Picotti, who represents more than 20 lettori at the University of Catania, told University World News that his clients have only accepted the November 2023 payment as a simple ‘deposit’ with reservations, and that litigation was ongoing.

“As opposed to what has happened in Milan, the sums that the University [of Catania] obtained from the interministerial financing were unilaterally determined and paid by the university, without previously reaching an agreement with the lettori in question that would put an end to the litigation, given that the sums that were paid in November 2023 were much lower than they should have been,” he said.

Another flaw of the interministerial decree was limited eligibility: “In the end only a handful of universities which had already signed a supplementary contract with the lettori in the 2019-2020 period were eligible to apply for this co-financing,” said John Gilbert, national coordinator of the lettori cause at Italy’s largest trade union, the FCL CGIL (Federazione Lavoratori della Conoscenza).

Gelmini Law

Gilbert explained that a small number of Italy’s 60 universities that are implicated (those that have employed lettori) have signed supplementary contracts in previous years and the majority of them have, instead, been applying an earlier contradictory and money-saving piece of legislation, Law 240 of 30 December 2010 (the so-called Gelmini Law), which allowed the reconstruction of lettoris’ careers only up to 1994 to 1995.

For work after this point, a new category of workers was created under different contractual obligations or CELs (collaboratori esperti linguistici in Italian).

“So, some universities have in the past received government funding to finance the compensation of some lettori but have compensated only from the day they started working to 1995, while others have taken their case to the Italian courts to get their entitled compensation after 1995. But these attempts have not always been successful,” he said.

“At the University of Florence, a group of us have had career reconstructions up to 2000, while colleagues in Siena are still in litigation at the Italian courts trying to receive a full career reconstruction,” Gilbert said.

“Only time will tell if and on what terms the government will unlock this funding again, through similar or other legislative measures,” he said.

EU penalties

According to Picotti, the interministerial decree was only introduced because Italy wanted to avoid any monetary penalties or legal repercussions from the European Union (EU), after its executive European Commission (EC) sent a January 2023 “reasoned opinion” within infringement proceedings suggesting a solution.

“But this plan did not work, and the EC referred Italy to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) anyway,” said Picotti, referring to the case that is still wending its way through the Luxembourg-based court.

With the interministerial decree, Italy partly wanted to demonstrate to the EC that it is doing something to resolve the issue, but it has not changed the Gelmini Law, which is one of the causes of the length of the dispute itself, said Picotti.

However, Henry Rodgers of the Rome-based Asso.CEL.L trade union, which also represents lettori, said the Milan Statale deal could be a turning point in the decades-long litigation.

“Certainly, the Milan deal is a good precedent in that it demonstrates to the European Commission that the university interprets the [ECJ] ruling in Case C-119/04”, an earlier 2004 judgement calling on Italy to cut through the lettori dispute morass. “We will push the Milan example with the EC,” he told University World News.

As official complainant in the EC's case against Italy, the Asso.CEL.L association and FCL CGIL are updating a national census on the number of lettori, which at last count was over 400, who are still awaiting full career compensation.

“We are finishing the monitoring that we're doing at the national level,” he said, with the findings to be sent to EU jobs and social rights Commissioner Nicolas Schmit, “on how the Italian state did not apply the interministerial decree to the reconstruction of the careers ab origine [from their beginning], as ECJ rulings have mandated”.

The universities and research ministry spokesperson told University World News that despite the referral to the ECJ, Italy is also keeping the European authorities constantly updated on the activities it has carried out regarding this issue and it “is confident” that the completion of the procedures, set forth in the interministerial decree (688/20230), can soon be transmitted to the ECJ, thereby “helping to put an end to this dispute”.

Any real chance of finally resolving the litigation in Italian courts will be due to pressure from the EC and fear of repercussions, said Picotti: "It all depends on the next ECJ ruling. Italy could be forced to change its laws. Italy also has several issues pending with the EC, such as [EU post-COVID development] PNRR funding, national budget law measures, beach concessions, he said, and the ECJ may use the lettori case “to tell Italy that EU law must be respected, and that the ECJ's rulings [and] sentences must be respected”.

Picotti concluded: “This is why the next ruling from the ECJ is so important, as it will put the pressure on Italy to finally enshrine the EU Treaty.”

Gilbert said he expected it to be “at least another year before we get a ruling”.