The University of Western Australia has admitted to underpaying $6.6 million of employee superannuation after an internal review discovered that the 17% superannuation entitlement had been calculated incorrectly.
UWA self-reported the underpayments to the Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman, estimating 700 existing and 5500 former employees were impacted.
A total of $10.6 million will be repaid to impacted workers with the remaining $4 million paid out as interest calculated based on each employee’s superannuation.
The University will conduct a review into the potential underpayment of casual staff later this year under its Employee Entitlement Remediation Program, and will also look into how it pays staff when long service leave is taken.
The University claims the underpayments were unintentional and due to a misinterpretation of legislative changes and a misunderstanding of their obligations under existing Enterprise Agreements.
NTEU UWA Branch President Dr Sanna Peden argued the review would find further underpayments.
“We know this multi-million dollar wage theft is only likely to get worse with management looking into possible underpayment of casual staff,” she said.
“The fact that WA’s richest university has presided over $10 million in wage theft shows an urgent need for state and federal governments to come down hard on the executives responsible.”
The Federal government has recently passed legislation formally criminalising wage theft and the NTEU claims $170 million has been stolen from 110,000 staff in recent years. No university has been fined based on the new legislation.
NTEU Acting WA Division Secretary Dr Scott Fitzgerald argued that broader changes were needed to prevent further cases of wage theft.
“The only way we can stop the wage theft epidemic is by ending the insecure work crisis and fixing universities’ broken governance model,” he said.
UWA’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Amit Chakma has apologised for the underpayments and maintained it was accidental.
“I deeply regret this has occurred, and offer my apologies to those affected,” she said.
“I assure you that discrepancies were unintentional, and the University has acted in accordance with what was understood to be our obligations.”