The protest follows mounting rebukes of managements’ treatment of casual staff, including investigations into wage theft across 21 universities.

Monash avoided classifying the issue as wage theft, instead using the term “unintentional underpayments.”

Staff are demanding renumeration for six years of unpaid marking and administration work.

“It seems that everyone now knows systematic underpayment occurs in Australian universities — everyone, that is, except our managers.”

Claims of wage theft were referred to as “a mistaken belief that casual academic staff are entitled to be paid for any time spent at their discretion and choice.”

“Once again the University's response appears very much to be 'why pay your staff correctly when legally you can get away with underpaying them?'”

Critics have said that the apology is not enough.

The University of New South Wales is reviewing casual underpayments following pressure from the NTEU.

90% of participants performed unpaid work at the University of Sydney during Semester 2.

The interim report showed that 84% of participants performed unpaid labour.