'These incorrect payments were unintentional and are deeply regrettable'
Monash University revealed on Thursday that it underpaid its casual academic staff approximately $7.6 million in an almost five-year period.
In a statement, the university said the outcome of its ongoing Quality Assurance reviews on more than 3.4 million timesheets so far has identified 3.6% as requiring remediation.
"While the review is ongoing, the University expects the amount of underpayment to be approximately $7.6 million by the end of 2024, with the average amount of identified underpayments per casual academic staff member to be $760 over an almost five-year period," the university said.
Some casual academic staff were paid incorrectly because they either weren't compensated for the correct minimum engagement period introduced in February 2020, or they were paid a lower "repeat" rate instead of the higher "original" rate for certain lectures or tutorials.
Monash said it is firmly committed to paying staff correctly in line with its enterprise agreement.
"These incorrect payments were unintentional and are deeply regrettable. As a university we apologise to all staff, past and present, who have been affected," said Acting Vice-Chancellor and President and Provost and Senior Vice-President Professor Susan Elliott AM in a statement.
Impacted employees will receive remediation payment, as well as interest and superannuation in March 2025, according to Elliott.
"We are also making further changes to ensure the identified issues do not occur in the future," she said.
The recent $7.6-million underpayment admission of Monash University adds to its previous $10 million underpayments, according to the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU).
"This admission brings Monash Uni's total wage theft bill to $17.6m since 2016. These are wages and superannuation unlawfully withheld from hard-working teachers," said Dr. Ben Eltham, NTEU Monash Branch President, in a statement.
"Monash's executive and governing board have broken the law and stolen from their own staff."
Australia's tertiary sector has racked up more than $382 million in underpayments to employees as of June 2024.
Various universities in Australia have been admitting to millions worth of underpayments to employees over the past years. They include the Swinburne University of Technology, Australian Catholic University, University of Sydney, University of Queensland, among others.
"We need an urgent federal parliamentary inquiry into the rotten governance in universities that has fuelled a wage theft epidemic, rampant casualisation and obscene executive pay," said Dr. Alison Barnes, NTEU National President, in a statement.
Australia's wage theft laws started taking effect this year, putting organisations who intentionally underpaid employees at risk of millions of fines.
