University of Melbourne to repay millions to staff

The University of Melbourne will repay more than $22m to thousands staff following a probe into wages at the prestigious institution.

The University of Melbourne will repay . Picture: Supplied

The University of Melbourne will pay $22m to 15,000 current and former casual staff after copping years of criticism for underpaying employees.

The university has reviewed 3.2 million pay slips from casual employees stretching back eight years and identified the incorrect payments.

The average payment per person is $1476, including superannuation and interest, the Deloitte review found.

However, some are likely to get much more than this, with one tutor in the Faculty of Arts claiming earlier this year that she was owed as much as $91,000.

The payments come as the university sector has been plagued by revelations of widespread underpayment dating back many years.

A recent senate inquiry implicated half of all Australian universities and the Fair Work Commission says addressing underpayments is one of its top priorities.

For decades, ongoing staff have been given repeated casual positions, inadequate time to do work, and been paid a flat rate for jobs that take longer than the payment time.

The University of Melbourne said the most common payment issues were failing to take into account a minimum engagement period for casual staff and a lack of overtime payments for public holidays and weekends.

Current and past employees will be contacted directly where a back payment is to be made as an outcome of the review.

Those who have been overpaid will not be asked to repay money and overpayment will not affect their right to obtain back pay for underpayment.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Duncan Maskell apologised “to any past or present employees who have not been paid correctly for work they performed”.

“We are committed to remediating these discrepancies and fully complying with our obligations,” he said. “We remain committed to strengthening the university’s governance structures, systems and processes and this continues to be an area of focus for our institution.”

In August this year the Fair Work Ombudsman commenced legal action against the university, alleging it tried to stop casual academics from claiming pay for hours they had done by threatening not to offer them any more work.

In June, University of Melbourne provost Nicola Phillips apologised for underpayment and said the institution would dramatically reduce its reliance on casual staff.

The National Tertiary Education Union has repeatedly reported “rampant” underpayment across the sector.