Fair Work Ombudsman lambasts university sector for underpayment ‘trends’

The Australian Higher Education Industrial Association executive director Craig Laughton said universities had responded to the issue of underpayments and that there had been “significant improvements”. The association is working with the Ombudsman to put in place a series of guidelines to help the sector identify, fix and have ongoing monitoring of underpayment issues.

“There’s no vice-chancellor that I have spoken to that isn’t taking this on as a significant issue for the university. They don’t want to be underpaying anybody,” Laughton said.

“There’s a multitude of reasons as to why underpayments have occurred. And it’s simply not that universities try to profiteer off some of the less protected workers in the system.”

He said he would be staggered if underpayment risks weren’t on every university’s risk register now, that they were identifying underpayments, repaying staff and improving systems and processes to avoid future issues.

He blamed “very complex” enterprise agreements for some confusion with underpayments, and said basic definitions needed to be clear and modernised so “you don’t need a PhD” to interpret payments.

“There’s no silver bullet here,” he said.

National Tertiary Education Union national president Alison Barnes said underpayment was a symptom of insecure work, which was rife in the sector and damaging not only to individuals without secure employment, but to students also.

“We’ve also campaigned for many years about issues like governance. The universities are increasingly run like private sector organisations as opposed to public sector organisations that should operate in the public good,” Barnes said.

“They’ve had ample time to fix their payroll systems. It shouldn’t take five years… 10 years to fix payroll systems, so it’s absolutely appalling.”

Barnes said it was “ridiculous” to say enterprise agreements were too complicated, as they were agreed upon by both management and unions and university management should train staff about how their enterprise agreements work.

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A University of Melbourne spokesperson said the vice-chancellor had formally apologised for underpayments and re-affirmed the university’s determination to ensure it wasn’t repeated. It has worked to remediate current and past staff relating to entitlements under the 2013 and 2018 enterprises agreements. It also introduced systems and payroll improvements, extra compulsory training for casual and managers and new roles to support engagement and management of casual staff.

A University of Newcastle spokesperson said the Ombudsman acknowledged their cooperation and early and open disclosures and commitment to establish and implement systems and processes -including training and education, policies and procedures – to avoid similar issues in the future. “Staff must be paid correctly,” she said.

“Existing Enterprise Agreements are highly complex across the university sector and simplification will help staff to understand their entitlements and will help universities ensure correct payment.”

The Australian Universities Accord Panel will report to the Minister for Education with an interim report on priority actions in June. The final report is due by December 2023.

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