The University of Technology Sydney and La Trobe University will backpay casual staff after the universities had underpaid workers.

According to the Fair Work Ombudsman, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is back-paying staff more than AUD 4.4 million (USD 2.9 million), plus superannuation and interest, and has entered into an Enforceable Undertaking with the Fair Work Ombudsman.

UTS reported its non-compliance to the regulator in May 2021 after becoming aware, when conducting an internal review while designing a new payroll system, that it had been underpaying employees’ minimum engagement entitlements since 2014.

The underpaid employees performed work across the university’s seven faculties, primarily at the main campus in the Sydney CBD. They were engaged as casual professional staff.

The underpayments occurred because UTS failed to review and update its employment contracts and payroll systems to reflect an increase in the minimum engagement pay for casual professional employees, first introduced under its 2014 professional staff enterprise agreement.

That agreement, and the University’s subsequent 2018 professional staff agreement, required casual professional employees to be paid for three hours per engagement, or one hour for those also enrolled as UTS students, regardless of whether they were required to work the whole time.

Under its Enforcement Undertaking with the Fair Work Ombudsman, UTS has agreed to back-pay 2,777 current and former casual professional employees AUD 4.4 million (USD 2.9 million) in minimum engagement entitlements underpaid between September 2014 and May 2021, plus more than AUD 1.3 million (USD 0.8 million) in superannuation and interest.

UTS has already back-paid more than AUD 3.5 million (USD 2.3 million) of the owed minimum engagement entitlements plus more than AUD 1 million (USD 0.6 million) in superannuation and interest, and the EU requires the University to pay the remaining amounts owed by 31 July 2023.

National Tertiary Education Union President Dr Alison Barnes said underpayments at UTS were preventable.

"This AUD 4.4 million (USD 2.9 million) case of wage theft should never have happened. But shocking as it is, at least seven Australian universities have committed more serious acts of theft against their own employees," she said. "The best protection against wage theft is to end the rampant job insecurity that plagues our universities."

Meanwhile, La Trobe University, in Melbourne, has agreed to backpay nearly AUD 2 million (USD 1.3 million) in wages, superannuation to casual staff over underpayment for marking over a seven-year period between 2015-2022. The casual staff had received a payout of AUD 4.5 million (USD 2.9 million) last year and last week it was announced by the Fair Work Commission that the approximately 3,000 workers will be paid the further AUD 1.94 million (USD 1.28 million).

Anastasia Kanjere, National Tertiary Education Union La Trobe branch president, said staff were not properly compensated for hours worked and instead would only be paid for hours allocated by the university.

Universities across Australia have been required to pay back more than AUD 80 million (USD 53 million) in wages owed to mostly casual workers, according to a wage theft report released by the NTEU earlier this year.