I recently had a run-in with a very large state University where I have been teaching and which is bent on forcing their self-imposed regulations down the throat of a poor adjunct that naively walked into the trap of signing a contract that contains no such regulations.
Hard to follow? Welcome to the maze of inane bureaucracy that stifles the Italian pubblica amministrazione. Here’s how it works and the sadomasochism checklist that goes with it:
You apply for a position after a bando has been proclaimed. No trumpets are involved, but abundant rubber-stamping and legalese usually accompany this. The bando is an endless scroll listing every possible caveat to make sure everyone can stand a fair chance of applying and landing the aforementioned job. Incidentally, this includes the offspring of disabled veterans, which are given precedence. A quick calculation would place such applicants in their seventies. Give youth a chance, thank you very much.
Once offered the job, you sign the contract which not only includes your teaching duties for that particular course, but very generously allows you to take part in unpaid services, including being a thesis supervisor, a member of an academic or degree board, to say nothing of the 7 exam sessions that draw out for months long after the course has ended. An all-inclusive package that is quite advantageous for the state university, which can rely on a larger pool of instructors and adjuncts to carry out a number of tasks that tenured staff would otherwise be unable to fulfill. A titolo gratuito, thank you very much.
With the onset of the pandemic, some state universities have scrambled to ensure that all enrolled students can follow taught courses online. Which is perfectly reasonable. This particular state university, however, had the brilliant idea of asking all the teachers to tape their lessons and share these on a platform so that students could retrieve them at any later time. A top-down decision, relayed via a decreto rettorale, without any recourse to appeal. This may seem a trifle, but when no such information is contained in a contract, it stands to reason that one should be given at least an option. And let’s not forget that reruns are usually paid in most industries.
The culture clash came when I inquired with the endless array of offices as to the legal implications of failing to comply with this newly introduced rule. The decreto was once again bandied about as the ultimate clincher: any decree can supplant previously signed contracts.
Is that so?
As a translator, I’m not accustomed to taking words at face value and thus dug my heels in. In English, ‘decreto rettorale’ is a regulation or ordinance by a Chancellor. To an Italian’s ears ‘decreto’ is the same word used by the Prime Minister, a presidential proclamation through and through. Quite an intimidating word. Would I go to Adjunct Jail if found guilty of noncompliance? Would they hold back my meager paycheck?
Because I couldn’t get a straight answer from the multiple offices I had turned to, I decided to tell the recruitment office that I would no longer continue to teach at their University. Their swift retort was: ‘Ne prendiamo atto‘. Which is what I had been suspecting all along: they ultimately do not care.
Ne prendiamo atto is an apparently meaningless and formulaic reply that roughly translates as ‘duly noted’. However, the implications run deeper and, quite sadly, the dinosaurian pubblica amministrazione encapsulates its very essence in it.
