University wage theft tops $159m: union tally
The university sector’s underpayment bill has topped $159 million, with most of the sector involved in short-changing some 100,000 staff.
The National Tertiary Education Union’s wage theft report has found that 32 institutions have underpaid 97,555 staff and academics in 55 incidents since 2009. Most breaches have occurred in the past decade.
The University of Melbourne was the worst offender with $45 million in underpayments. Wayne Taylor
The backpay bill, mostly involving overworked casual academics, is set to increase over the next couple of years as million-dollar underpayment audits or legal actions against Monash University, University of NSW, Curtin University, Deakin University and Charles Darwin University are finalised.
The NTEU used the tally to call for major governance and accountability reforms following Education Minister Jason Clare’s call for universities to become “exemplary employers” through the Universities Accord process.
“The fact that wage theft is so widespread in Australian universities is a damning indictment of the current governance model,” president Alison Barnes said.
“Unaccountable vice-chancellors on million-dollar salaries have been in charge of this crisis with almost no accountability.
“If universities are to finally become exemplary employers then we need to end the scourge of casualisation using state and federal powers, including funding.”
Victoria was the worst state for university wage theft according to the report, totalling $75 million in underpayments, followed by NSW at $65 million and Tasmania at $11 million.
Priority areas
The University of Melbourne also topped the country with its $45 million underpayment affecting 30,000 casual academics.
The University of Wollongong followed with $18 million, involving superannuation and casual wage underpayments, and University of Sydney recorded $14.7 million in mostly casual underpayments.
While the earliest underpayment making up the $158.7 million total dated back to the introduction of the Fair Work Act in 2009, the vast majority of incidents occurred since 2014.
The data comes as the Universities Accord is weighing up some of its biggest reforms in decades.
Mr Clare has identified university governance on industrial relations compliance as one of five priority areas for reforms in response to the accord’s interim report.
As part of the governance reform, the NTEU is pushing to increase staff and student voices on university councils and senates as well as impose national governance guidelines and data reports on fixed-term and casual employees.
The union also wants to tie government funding to universities converting casuals to permanent employees.
New Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth has labelled the university sector a priority for her agency due to systemic and long-term underpayment of casual staff.
The watchdog recently launched legal action against UNSW for “knowingly” having payroll practices so poor they made it next to impossible to work out whether casual academics were underpaid.
The University of Melbourne is also facing court for allegedly threatening not to re-employ casuals if they claimed extra pay beyond their contracted hours and for a corporate culture that tacitly authorised underpayments.
A final report on the accord will be delivered by January next year.
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