University of Sydney back-pays over 14,000 staff

Review ongoing for casual academic staff who may be underpaid

BY Dexter Tilo 14 Dec 2024

The University of Sydney is back-paying more than $23 million in payments to more than 14,000 staff that it underpaid between 2014 and 2022.

The university underpaid 14,727 current and former employees for their work between January 2014 and June 2022, resulting in more than $19 million in unpaid wages, along with an additional $3.2 million in interest and nearly $950,000 in superannuation.

Affected staff include both permanent and casual professional employees, as well as permanent and casual academics, who were underpaid various entitlements. These included base pay rates, minimum engagement periods for casuals, leave payments (including leave loading), overtime (including meal allowances and TOIL entitlements), shift penalties and loadings, higher duties allowances, and rates for marking and tutorials.

Most of the affected staff were underpaid about $1,300, excluding interest and superannuation, with the highest underpayment reaching $83,271.

The university has so far rectified $20.49 million to more than 11,700 current and former staff, according to its website.

Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Annamarie Jagose said the underpayments were deeply regrettable.

"We apologise again to our affected staff. It's imperative we pay our people correctly for the valuable work they do. It is central to our values of trust and accountability, and we are committed to getting this right," Jagose said in a statement.

Entering an Enforceable Undertaking

The university is expected to complete its rectification of underpayments as it enters an Enforceable Undertaking (EU) with the Fair Work Ombudsman, where it is also mandated to make a $500,000 contrition payment to the Commonwealth's Consolidated Revenue Fund.

Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth said the EU was appropriate after the university cooperated with the FWO's investigation and committed to complete ratification.

Under the EU, the university also agreed to a range of measures, including:

Training all staff responsible for the management of employees, human resources, recruitment, and payroll on employee entitlements
Maintaining its employee payments complaint and review mechanism, and reporting back to the FWO regularly on the specifics of any complaints or review requests that relate to matters under the EU
Telling staff about the EU through an intranet notice and an all-staff email
Ensuring that any systemic contraventions of workplace laws are reported to the FWO and the University's Joint Consultative Committee
Including a standing agenda item to discuss and address the University's compliance with the EU and its workplace law obligations at the relevant sub-committee of the University of Sydney Senate; and a standing agenda item at meetings of the University Senate to receive the sub-committee's reports on that compliance

"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," Booth said in a statement.

Completing the Casual Academic Review

Meanwhile, the EU also sees to it that the University of Sydney completes its Casual Academic Review in 18 months, including rectification and payment of interest and superannuation to employees.

The review involves looking at potential underpayments that may be owed to casual academic staff from Semester 1 2017 to Semester 1 2023.

"We're advancing a large programme of work across the university to make sure our staff, including our casual academic colleagues, are being paid correctly and we are meeting our record-keeping obligations," Jagose said.

"We're also continuing to identify and remediate any past underpayments and will remediate all identified underpayments in full, including superannuation and interest, as quickly as possible."

The University of Sydney is the second Australian university to enter an EU with the FWO this month, after the University of Melbourne also recently signed the "most comprehensive" EU entered into by any university.