Wage theft: Griffith University staff underpaid $6m over decade

The national workplace watchdog has exposed wage theft at Griffith University where close to 6000 staff were underpaid more than $6m over the past decade.

Griffith University owes thousands of staff millions in underpaid wages.

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Nearly six thousand current and former staff at Griffith University have been underpaid more than $6m over the past decade and will receive more than $8m in back-pay.

The majority of the academic and other professional staff affected were based in Brisbane and they worked across the arts, education and law divisions, as well as business, health and sciences and across all six of its campuses including South Bank, Nathan, Logan and the Gold Coast and a virtual campus.

The wage theft has been revealed by the national workplace watchdog the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) after the university self-reported to the FWO in March 2022.

The university has now entered into an enforceable undertaking (EU), a promise to make-good, with the FWO.

The underpayments were caused by poorly trained course conveners and school administrators, scant data collection during onboarding, deficient or non-existent payroll and data review processes, lack of automation allowing for human error and deficiencies in payroll systems, the FWO says.

Close to 6000 staff were impacted.

In total 5,457 current and former employees will receive $8.34m including interest and superannuation, for work performed between July 2015 and June 2024.

Already it has paid $5.83m to 5,226 staff with one staffer receiving more than $92,400.

Individual underpayments ranged from less than $1 to more than $92,400, including superannuation and interest.

Two years ago the National Tertiary Education Union estimated Griffith University was responsible for $2,566,655 worth of wage theft since 2014, from 664 staff.

The promise to repay $8m comes a year after rival institution, the University of Queensland, told its staff via email that 9743 staff had been underpaid $7.88m over seven years to December 2023.

The underpayments related to minimum hours of engagement for casual academic and casual professional staff.

Griffith University has agreed to pay $175,000 to a not-for-profit advocating for fair working conditions for cleaners to show contrition, and to fix its systems to ensure the wage-theft never occurs again.

Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth said the university’s promise to repay the staff and fix the errors in its systems was appropriate given it had co-operated with the FWO’s investigation.

“Griffith University deserves credit for acknowledging its breaches and the underlying issues, and 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,” Ms Booth said.

The university has agreed to update its payroll and record-keeping systems and giving the FWO data to ensure it pays its staff correctly in future.

It will also pay for two independent audits to look for underpayments and check it is meeting all employee entitlements.

Griffith University failed to pay at the correct rates for initial and repeat tutorials as well as PhD qualification rates, subject co-ordination rates, initial session rates, proctor rates and research assistant rates, the FWO states.

It also failed to pay the correct amount for minimum daily engagement periods, and did not pay fitness employees split-shift and meal allowances.

Since January under new wage-theft laws employers who intentionally underpay staff can be jailed for up to a decade.

Originally published as Wage theft: Griffith University staff underpaid $6m over decade