Australia’s Fair Work Ombudsman announced it has launched legal action against the University of New South Wales (UNSW), alleging it breached laws relating to record-keeping, pay slips and frequency of wage payments.

The Ombudsman alleges its investigation discovered that UNSW breached the Fair Work Act between 2017 and 2022 by failing to make and keep records of hours, rates of pay and details of loadings and other entitlements owed to casual academic employees.

Furthermore, the Ombudsman said UNSW failed to include lawfully required information in pay slips, such as basic information relating to pay rates and casual loading; and failed to pay staff wages at least monthly for all hours worked.

It is also alleged UNSW staff were often unlawfully paid certain parts of their entitlements several weeks or even months after they actually performed the work.

According to the Ombudsman, the breaches, alleged in the Federal Circuit and Family Court, were part of record-keeping practices so inadequate that they made it difficult to identify whether employees had been underpaid.

The litigation focuses on a sample of 66 allegedly affected casual academic staff in UNSW’s Business School, based at Kensington in Sydney. The regulator also alleges that UNSW committed some of the contraventions despite a number of staff in the business school having previously been made aware that UNSW’s record-keeping practices were not adequate and it needed to take action to address non-compliance issues.

It is alleged that from March 2018 some of UNSW’s alleged record-keeping breaches were committed knowingly and as part of a systematic pattern of conduct and meet the definition of ‘serious contraventions’ under the Fair Work Act.

Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth said the nature and extent of UNSW’s alleged contraventions meant that litigation was the appropriate response.

“UNSW is providing the FWO (Fair Work Ombudsman) with regular updates on its publicly announced extensive back-payment program, but we allege that because of its contraventions, we have not been able to properly verify the University’s self-reported underpayments,” Booth said. “Record-keeping is a crucial part of compliance with workplace laws, and this litigation and the penalties we will seek are a warning to all employers to prioritise getting records right.

“It is completely unacceptable for an employer’s record-keeping practices to be so poor that they prevent us from assessing what hours its employees have worked and whether it has paid its employees their full lawful entitlements,” Booth added.

The FWO is seeking penalties against UNSW for multiple alleged contraventions. Penalties for the alleged contraventions are up to AUD 66,600 (USD 42,649) per contravention and up to AUD 666,000 (USD 426,496) per serious contravention.