Qld Health payroll bungle to cost millions

A major union has called for an overhaul of Queensland Health’s payroll system after revelations of over and underpayments dating back as far as 2020, with claims the government was ‘dismissive’ when concerns were raised.

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A major union representing health workers has called for an urgent overhaul of Queensland Health’s “completely cooked” payroll system after it was revealed thousands have not been paid “millions” in wages.

Thousands of public health employees across Queensland’s 16 hospital and health services have been impacted because of a long-running error involving workers’ classification as “afternoon”, “day”, or “shift” being mislabelled dating back possibly to 2014.

It means employees were incorrectly receiving or not getting shift allowances based on their award.

The issue was first identified in 2020 when an allied health worker noticed discrepancies in their pay. The department then ordered an external audit which identified the mislabelling of workers’ classifications and led to revelations a cohort of 2500 people being overpaid $23,000.

This prompted Queensland Health to undertake a major correction of workers’ classification throughout the payroll system in January 2022.

Since then it has moved to sift through its payroll records to determine how many other employees had been impacted, with another 1200 people found to have been overpaid a total of $260,000 over eight years to 2014.

Queensland Health Minister Yvette D'Ath. Picture: Kevin Farmer

The Australian Workers’ Union Queensland state secretary Stacey Schinnerl today said the department had been told to fix the payroll system for years, but had been “dismissive and often arrogant about the problem”.

“I have personally spoken to Yvette D’Ath today and I am satisfied she will make sure these workers are paid what they are owed as quickly as possible. I’ll be staying in close contact with the Minister until this happens,” she said.

“But we also need the department to urgently address the root problem here, which is that their payroll system is completely cooked and regularly leaves hospital workers out of pocket.

“When a hospital worker is underpaid this can have a huge impact on their quality of life. Often these workers are not paid a great deal for the incredibly important work they do for our state. When they get short-changed on their pay it can really have a harmful effect.”

Ms D’Ath today confirmed the bungle would likely cost “millions” of dollars in unpaid wages, but the government asserts the scale of the error was relatively small.

Under law, Queensland Health must back date its investigations six years – meaning it must go back to 2014 considering the first person came forward in 2020.

The internal audit by Queensland Health of its pay slips to employees is still ongoing, with the scale of underpayments not yet known amid manual crosschecks.

“Although millions sounds a lot, (Queensland Health has) a $16bn payroll, so there are unders and overs on a regular basis,” Ms D’Ath said.

“It is not out of the realms to assume that it will be in the millions … it is likely to be small amounts to lots of individuals.

Ms D’Ath said the department would engage with the relevant unions once the full cohort of impacted employees is known, noting the staff impacted will be those in “operational” roles.

Queensland Health director general Shaun Drummond said the department’s audit was initiated because of a “concern that we may have not put people into the right shift allocation for what they should get paid”.

“And so we are absolutely going through with rigour to identify anybody that could be in that category,” he said.

“This happens when somebody starts employment for us and we actually say, are you a day worker? Are you a shift worker? And it’s effectively how they’re set up at that point in time.

“Then subsequently, this happened because an employee was being paid correctly as per the category they were put in. But they said I’m not in the right category.”

Under law, Queensland Health must back date its investigations six years. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

The internal audit by Queensland Health is expected to be done before the end of the financial year, with Ms D’Ath directing the department to reimburse underpaid staff progressively as they are identified and certified to be owed money.

But those who are overpaid will not be pursued for the discrepancies.

Just as we did with the first group will now start engaging with the relevant unions, because these are predominantly operational staff. We will engage with the unions once we’ve actually identified the full cohort and the next step is getting the hospital and health services to cross check that against do actual records of the ships those individuals worked.

But the scale of underpayments is not yet known, with Queensland Health’s internal audit of its pay dockets still ongoing. with Ms D’Ath confirming she expected it to be in the millions.