Suicides, fractured lives and grim expectations underline Lettori cost of defying Italian university discrimination

 ROME – The apparent suicide of an Irish lecturer on the staff of the University of Siena has underlined the high level of stress facing scores of lettori who rectors across Italy are sueing to try and force them to re-pay that Italian courts had awarded them as compensation for discrimination, education sources say.

 Graham Cotter, a father of three, died in January after Siena university put him under pressure to return hundreds of thousands of euros awarded to him, the sources said. A spokesman for the university, Antonio Rosario D'Agnelli, told the Italian Insider that the university could neither confirm nor deny whether Cotter had taken his own life as a result of the university’s demands on him.

 “The University of Siena is not aware of the situation described by you, but we are however checking and we will let you know,” Sig. D’Agnelli said Oct. 23. The university provided no further information on the case but members of the Association of Foreign Lecturers in Italy (ALLSI) say that it was by no means unusual among their colleagues.

  Susanna Dubosas, a British lecturer at the University of Basilicata, was awarded 225,759 euros for an arrears of unpaid wages under a judgement by the Potenza Court of Appeal on Nov. 13, 2016. Eight other colleagues at the southern university also were awarded similar sums.

 The compensation was paid to her in monthly installments between 2017 and 2018 but the Court of Cassation has overturned the lower court and this could lead to her having to pay back the 225,000 originally awarded to her before the so-called Gelmini law, which concdolidated a 1995 measure downgrading lettori from associate professors to mere language technicians, came into force in 2011. Susanna’s current take home pay after 30 years working at the university is just 951 euros and 33 centesimi per month.

 “Undoubtedly, the psychological and physical harm resulting from our dispute with UNIBAS, which has dragged on for over 30 years, and above all the final blow dealt by Order No. 13886/2023 of the Court of Cassation, filed on 19 May 2023, must have had an impact on my physical health due to the stress, anxiety, fear and a sense of helplessness,” Susanna, 66, told ALLSI Chair David Petrie.

 The stress and anxiety contributed “to the development of breast cancer confirmed by the histological report issued by the CROB (Basilicata Oncology Reference Centre) on 13 December 2024 (one and a half years after the aforementioned ruling by the Court of Cassation) and confirmed by the INT and the IEO in Milan, as well as cardiovascular problems which arose at the beginning of 2025, for which I had to seek treatment at the Humanitas Hospital in Milan.”

 “I am still undergoing treatment for the cancer, which will last a further six years. Naturally, I have all the medical reports to substantiate these illnesses.”

 At the University of Salerno, Filomena Feraco, a lecturer who is both American and Italian, aged 63, told Petrie that the stress contributed to the death from cancer of another colleague in her faculty.

 “As you probably already know, our dear friend (name withheld)  got breast cancer that eventually led to her death and I can assure you because I saw her being consumed by all of the injustices from university,” Ms Feraco said.

 In a similar case the Florence Court of Appeal, following a ruling in the European Court of Justice,  awarded a Belgian lecturer, 367,000 euros in damages for arrears in unpaid wages and unpaid pension contributions. This ruling, however was quashed by the Court of Cassation, resulting in the Florence Appeal Court setting aside its previous award and ordering the lecturer to repay over 367,299.52 euros plus applicable interest in salary differences and recalculations of social security contributions that were reduced proportionally.

 The tragedy of Cotter at Siena had at least one precedent in Trieste. Charles Lambert, a lettore at the university of Trieste, wrote in an article for the Times Higher Education Supplement about the struggle of thelettori to obtain respect and equal rights in employment.

 “In December 2005, Sigrid Vesnaver committed suicide in Trieste. She had been born in Germany but had taught her language and literature at the University of Trieste for 12 years, was respected by her students, dedicated to her work and happily married to a colleague,” ““Lambert wrote.

 “Despite this, her husband is convinced that her suicide was at least partly a response to treatment she received from her employer and faculty colleagues. Sigrid was a lettore.”

 “The category of lettore was invented in 1980 as part of a reform to streamline academic careers in Italy. Lettori were expected to teach their language and its literature, write and mark exams and assist students. What they weren't expected to do was claim the rights of their Italian colleagues.”

 “In practice, the reform excluded foreign-born language teachers from the benefits enjoyed by Italian academics. Lettori were paid substantially less than researchers or professors. They had no national insurance or pensions. They were hired on annual contracts, for a maximum of six years, after which they were said to have lost their "linguistic freshness" - as though lettori were a variety of salad leaf and language a vitamin.”

 “When Sigrid began work, in 1992, the sell-by date had been defeated in the courts and lettori had tenure, albeit with the wages of a janitor. But in 1994 the situation took another turn for the worse. Anxious to sidestep a series of court judgments that had recognised lettori as university teachers, the Government redefined the category. The lettore was replaced by the collaboratore ed esparto linguistico (linguistic collaborator and expert, otherwise known as CEL), a job title that made no reference to teaching. What the CEL would do remained the same. Only the label changed.”

 “Lettori were presented with a choice: to resign or to sign a contract that upped their wages (and hours) but relegated them to the category of technical-administrative workers. Many lettori chose a typically Italian solution: to accept and, simultaneously, deny the validity of the new contract.”

 Following lawyers' advice, many lettori both signed and contested the contract …  years later, a great number of these cases are still in court.”

 In an open letter to Domenico Romeo, then rector of the University of Trieste, Sigrid's husband wrote: "You have consciously exploited the lettori (...) Perhaps now, too late and in the light of two court decisions against you, you will decide to pay the lettori their dues."

 "But my wife will no longer be able to benefit from this, now that she has been struck down by an illness greatly contributed to by your arrogance and your scorn for other people's rights."

 jp