The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) has reported a $23 million wage theft by the USyd administration against its staff. 14,727 USyd staff were underpaid for work between January 2014 and June 2022.
Wages and miscellaneous entitlements comprise $19 million of this payment, with an additional $3.2 million in interest and $947,000 in superannuation.
So far, USyd has fulfilled $20.49 million of this amount. The total wage theft amounts to $23,213,392.30.
The underpayments range from $1 to $83,271. According to the FWO, most of the payments were around $1,300, excluding interest and superannuation.
Part of the payment is a $500,000 contrition payment to the Commonwealth’s Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF), a self-executing fund within the Australian government.
On top of the contrition payment, USyd must pay any wages, interest and superannuation for former employees who cannot be found to the CRF.
Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth stated, “The University of Sydney has acknowledged its governance failures and breaches, and has responded by committing significant time and resources to put in place corrective measures that will ensure both full remediation of impacted staff and improved compliance for the future.”
The administration is bound by an Enforceable Undertaking (EU), an agreement with the FWO between themselves and an organisation that has not followed Australian workplace law. USyd entered the EU on the 10th of December.
Booth added that “Under the EU, in addition to rectifying the small remaining part of the confirmed underpayments to date, the University has committed to complete the ongoing Casual Academic Review, and to rectify any further underpayments found.”
USyd self-disclosed the risk of staff underpayments to the FWO in 2020, and has paid over 11,700 employees in remediation payment as of 1st November 2024. Most of these are casual professional staff.
The EU also obliges USyd to commission an independent audit of employee entitlements, to correct the remaining underpayments, and to complete the ongoing Casual Academic Review (CAR). The CAR is to be completed within the next 18 months.
Lucy Nicholls from the USyd Casuals Network commented, “The wage theft admitted by Sydney Uni management is merely the tip of the iceberg. Casualised academics continue to be underpaid and denied job security while management looks for ways to evade accountability.”
She added, “That management has admitted to any wage theft is the result of years of tireless advocacy from casuals, at great personal risk… Sydney Uni must commit not only to repay all stolen wages, but also to end the precarity and exploitation of the casualised workforce.”
Professor Annamarie Jagose, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, declared: “It’s imperative we pay our people correctly for the valuable work they do. It is central to our values of trust and accountability.”
The university’s annual review includes a $70.1 million provision for “potential underpayment liabilities.”
Since declaring the priority of fair work compliance in 2022, the FWO has entered EUs with other universities including the University of Melbourne, the University of Technology Sydney, the University of Newcastle and Charles Sturt University.
There is also an ongoing legal case between the FWO and the University of New South Wales over contraventions under the Fair Work Act between 2017-2022, with a penalty hearing to be held in March 2025.
