Determined and patient: Scot who won millions for unpaid foreign lecturers
A campaigning Scot who has helped win more than ¤5 million in compensation for foreign lecturers in a longrunning pay dispute in Italy believes the result could open the door to further bigmoney claims.
David Petrie, a retired academic, was at the centre of securing an agreement that settled claims by 33 foreign language university lecturers – known as “lettori” – against the State University of Milan, alleging they had been underpaid for many years.
The agreement secured a ¤5.4 million compensation deal 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 Petrie, who is president of the Association of Foreign Lecturers in Italy (ALLSI), representing the country’s 1800-or-so lettori.
Petrie, 72, said he hopes the victory will offer a pathway to end a number of other disputes between academics and their employers over the fact that non-national foreign language lecturers in Italy have for long received lower salaries and benefits compared with their Italian counterparts.
Petrie said that Milan’s foreign language lecturers were happy to 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.”
Petrie said if other Italian universities followed suit, the resulting employment claims could total more than ¤50 million.
A spokesperson for Italy’s Ministry of Education, Universities and Research said that 17 universities had now applied for an undisclosed amount of government co-financing for lettori.
However, any comprehensive solution to what has become a nationwide pay and conditions issue for hundreds of other foreign lecturers working in Italy will probably rest on an upcoming ruling on the issue from the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
Petrie said: “We have been to the ECJ six times but we are hoping that the next ruling could finally open the door to a fairer deal for foreign language lecturers across Italy and it will rule on if Italy has properly paid up, or not.
“It has been a long, hard road to get to this stage, but worth it.”
Petrie, originally from Dumbarton, first became involved in academic employment disputes not long after he arrived in Verona to work as a university lecturer 40 years ago.
“My employers told me they hoped I hadn’t given up any other jobs I had because they had run out of money and couldn’t pay me what I was owed,” he said. “I believed that this was a breach of EU rules and was discrimination based on nationality. I organised a petition and won my own case.”
This led to Petrie forming an independent trade union for foreign lecturers, which didn’t go down well with university bosses.
“My name soon disappeared from my office door and my details disappeared from the staff directory,” he said.
Petrie, who has a daughter in Edinburgh, has now retired and lives on the tiny island of Procida, in the Gulf of Naples.
But he still battles tirelessly for the rights of foreign lecturers and said that down the years he had worked on around 1,200 employment cases and had helped win tens of millions of Euros in compensation for colleagues.
He has also been liaising with the UK Government over supporting the rights of the non-italian lecturers.
Petrie is grateful for the help of Scots MP Deidre Brock – who he said has been in contact with the Foreign Office to keep the UK mindful of the legal rights of UK workers and voters in Italy – and he plans to meet her again in Edinburgh.
“I still have work to do for the lettori and I am also talking to the heirs of foreign language lecturers who had made pay claims in Italy but had since died,” he explained. “I will continue to fight for them.
“The legal system in Italy is very difficult to navigate and even if you win a case, actually seeing the money you have been awarded is another thing altogether. You have to be determined – and patient.”
Petrie added: “Down the decades this has become like a second job to me. It has been my life’s work and I intend to keep at it.”