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

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

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.

In an administrative oversight, at least one staff member was sent the email despite having already been offered a conversion.

Protestors demanded increased income support payments and vaccine, test and isolation leave for all workers.

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

For casual staff, working while ill is not an anomaly but points to systemic exploitation in the university model.

The ‘uberisation’ of universities was criticised for degrading education and the lives of staff.