The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has demanded “major changes to university governance” after the Swinburne University of Technology conceded to $2.85 million in wage theft between 2017 and December 2023, impacting around 1,800 staff.
The figure reported to the Fair Work Ombudsman by Swinburne University management encompasses the $2.6 million owed to current and former Swinburne University staff, and $2,500 owed to employees of the part-privately owned Swinburne College.
The Swinburne branch of NTEU’s campaign against alleged underpayments and wage theft began in 2020, after complaints by academics employed on a casual basis as tutors, who were paid at the ‘other’ rate instead of the expected ‘teaching delivery’ rate. This resulted in an underpayment of several thousand dollars and affected their applications for future roles.
In an email addressed to Swinburne staff and made public by the University, Vice-Chancellor Pascale Quester apologised and acknowledged the “frustration many of you will feel at hearing this news,” and that underpayments were “unintentional but should not have occurred.”
Swinburne NTEU Branch President Dr Julie Kimber stated: “the NTEU raised several issues over Swinburne’s payroll practices with the Wage Inspectorate in 2022.”
“We urge the Fair Work Ombudsman to investigate why the University has only just notified this issue despite being aware of the problems for over two years.”
“Given this wilful inaction, those responsible must be held to account.” Kimber said. In reference to the University’s self-directed inquiry through the financial services firm KPMG, and the fact that the University brought allegations of wage theft directly to Fair Work, Kimber stated: “a voluntary self-report should not be a get-out-of-jail free card.”
Kimber also noted that the Vice-Chancellor recently “got a $250,000 private ensuite built for her,” whilst “responsible for multi-million dollar wage theft.”
This finding follows admissions of wage theft from several other universities, prompted by an independent, nation-wide inquiry into systemic underpayments in Australian universities led by the union last year. The resulting report found that over 97,000 university staff have suffered a collective loss of $159 million, though it projected the “true tally” of wage theft to be “much higher,” considering eight cases that remained ongoing when the report was published last December. According to the report, the “vast majority” of these underpayments occurred since 2014.
A federal and state ministerial meeting on Friday resolved to work with the NTEU to ensure lawful employment practices in universities on a national scale.
In September last year, the Albanese Labor government announced its commitment to criminalising wage theft, as a part of the Closing Loopholes Bill; Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Tony Burke stated: “if a worker steals from the till, it’s a criminal offence… but in many parts of the country, if an employer steals from a worker’s pay packet, it’s not. It’s time to end this double standard once and for all.”
The government committed $32.4 million over four years to implement this policy, with increases to civil penalties and changes to “serious contraventions” having commenced 1 January 2024, and the new wage theft offence commencing “by proclamation of no later than 1 January 2025.”
Demanding immediate action, the NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes stated: ““It’s infuriating and unacceptable that university staff keep suffering wage theft despite our union highlighting more than $170 million in underpayments across Australia.
“Federal and state governments must pull unaccountable vice-chancellors into line for this shocking behaviour that is leaving workers millions of dollars out of pocket.
“The explosion of insecure work and broken governance system is fuelling the systemic wage theft plaguing public universities.”
Vice Chancellor Pascale Quester has assured affected staff they will receive “full remediation, together with interest and superannuation… as soon as possible,” that they are “working constructively” with the Fair Work Commission and other regulators, including the NTEU. The University has announced its commitment to “ongoing full pay compliance”.