A new report has found that Australian universities, including those at the top, have underpaid their staff by at least $83 million (US$57 million) since 2020.
In those cases, the union “conservatively” estimated that higher education employees were owed a total of $83.4 million.
And if three other ongoing cases are added to the analysis, the figure will likely hit the $90 million threshold.
The report stated that the NTEU had recovered millions of dollars in wage theft for employees.
Top Universities Underpay Staff
The University of Melbourne, the number one higher education provider in Australia, topped the list of institutions owing money to workers with $31.6 million in underpaid salaries and wages.Other top violators were the University of Sydney and Monash University, which were estimated to underpay their staff by $12.7 million and $8.6 million, respectively.
In addition, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, a popular university but not among those with a high international ranking, also appeared on the list with $10 million in underpayment.
Among the jurisdictions, Victoria came in first with a total amount of owed wages and salaries of $50 million–which is not surprising given the high number of tertiary institutions in the state, followed by New South Wales at $25 million and Queensland at $2 million.
“Systemic wage theft has been baked into universities’ business models,” the union’s national president Alison Barnes said in comments obtained by AAP.
The NTEU branded the underpayment practice “shameful,” saying big universities raked in massive profits and senior executives enjoyed millions of dollars in salaries at the expense of hard-working staff.
“The sheer scale of wage theft in higher education is staggering,” Barnes said.
“It’s absolutely shameful that so many Australian university staff have had wages stolen.”
The union attributed the underpayment issues to the mass casualisation of teaching and supporting positions at Australian universities and called for more workers to have access to secured jobs.
The University of Melbourne Faces Legal Action for Underpaying Workers
The report comes as the University of Melbourne is now facing further legal action over allegedly underpaying casual staff and making false or misleading records between 2017 and 2019.The Fair Work Ombudsman recently announced that it had sued the university for allegedly contravening the Fair Work Act by failing to pay 14 casual staff at the hourly rates required under its enterprise agreement during the period.
The ombudsman alleged that the university paid 14 casual staff at the Faculty of Arts for marking work based on “benchmarks” rather than enterprise agreements.
Specifically, the casual staff allegedly had to enter their working hours into the university’s human resources information system according to the benchmarks rather than the actual hours they worked.
The practice resulted in an estimated total underpayment of $154,000 for the 14 casual staff, ranging between $927 and $30,140 for each individual.
This also led to the Fair Work Ombudsman alleging that the University of Melbourne engaged in making false or misleading records with the knowledge of some senior managers.
If found guilty, Melbourne University could face penalties of up to $630,000 per serious contravention and up to $63,000 per breach for the other allegations.
The Federal Court in Melbourne has yet to set a date for the directions hearing.
While the case still develops, it is worth noting that the University of Melbourne has made headlines in recent years for its underpayment practice, forcing the institution to issue apologies and make remedies.
In November 2022, the university apologised to about 15,000 current and former casual staff and promised to pay back $22 million in owed wages and salaries.
