The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has called on the Federal government to act on new data that shows wage theft in the tertiary sector is expected to exceed $382 million with confirmed underpayments by universities reaching $203 million in recent years.
This figure is enshrined in the third edition of the NTEU’s Public Universities Wage Theft Report, which has estimated that wage theft in the country has surpassed $382 million, impacting “at least 131,471 individual higher education staff.”
The report clarifies the types of underpayment considered in the figure, which include failure to pay penalty rates, failure to pay the appropriate rate, failure to pay minimum shift durations, incorrect payments for marking, and withholding payments of superannuation.
This report has included provisions in the estimate, meaning it has accounted for universities preemptively setting aside finances to cover “future projected underpayments required to rectify historical underpayments.”
While some Universities have self-reported underpayments to the Fair Work Ombudsman, many are still fighting wage theft claims.
According to 2023 budget documents, a further $168 million has been set aside by universities to repay workers for potential claims.The 2023 University of Sydney annual report set aside $70.1 million for potential payment liabilities as part of an ongoing review into casual staff pay.
From 2014, the University of Sydney has underpaid 13,040 staff $14,827,457, one of the highest amounts across the sector.
Recent cases of wage theft include underpayments of superannuation at the University of Western Australia, and underpaying casual wages at James Cook University and the University of Queensland.
In these cases, University management denied deliberately underpaying staff citing misinterpretations of payment legislation and errors in payment software.
NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes has called the figures “a national disgrace.”
“University staff will not accept any more empty platitudes – it’s time for vice-chancellors to finally face proper scrutiny for this awful behaviour,” Barnes said.
The Albanese government has passed new laws making underpayments a crime with the penalties set to take effect on January 1st 2025. This legislation, part of larger industrial relations reform, has yet to be tested on University cases.
Barnes argues that harsher penalties need to be applied and a parliamentary enquiry is needed to be held to examine the issue.
“Wage theft is a crime. Who has lost their job? Who is going to jail?,” she said.
In a press release today, Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi named wage theft in the sector as “a systemic scourge that is harming staff across the country.”
“The fact that we have a university system where vice chancellor’s earn salaries exceeding $1 million a year while casual staff are robbed of hundreds of millions of dollars is obscene.”
The NTEU attached a petition at the end of the report, imploring that the “Government ensures that there are no job losses as a result of the implementation of the Accord Recommendations.”
“We will continue to campaign for a sector that provides secure employment, better access, good governance, and Better Universities.”
The petition can be accessed here.
