La Trobe University in new payment dispute
La Trobe University has been hit with new claims of underpaying casual staff that could force it to back pay millions more dollars.
Victoria
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La Trobe University is facing fresh underpayment claims that could force it to back-pay casual staff millions more dollars after forking out more than $3m in withheld wages last year.
The National Tertiary Education Union lodged a new dispute against the university after uncovering further cases of underpayment of staff who were paid the wrong casual rate for marking assignments.
University management has agreed to pay workers between $1m and $2m but staff say they are owed more.
NTEU La Trobe branch president Alysia Rex said the proposed redress amount was “beyond inadequate”.
“La Trobe management’s proposal is a hack job that will fail to cure most of the noncompliance, fail to ensure future compliance in respect of casual academic marking and deliberately exclude the involvement of the union and casual staff because it’s more interested in a speedy process than actually back-paying stolen wages,” Ms Rex said.
La Trobe casual employee Anastasia Kanjere said she would be back-paid more than $50,000 if she were remunerated for all hours of unpaid work across lecturing and research in Spanish, politics and legal studies during her eight-year tenure.
Dr Kanjere said the latest dispute scratched the surface of how much staff really were underpaid.
“This is like the most obvious or most egregious form of underpayment because it’s quite explicitly illegal what management is doing in relation to marking. But it’s by no means the only way that casuals get underpaid,” she said.
In August, RMIT University was forced to back-pay thousands of employees a combined $3.5m. Melbourne University in 2020 repaid millions of dollars to at least 1500 academics across four faculties.
NTEU Victorian Division assistant secretary Sarah Roberts said universities had to be stopped from stealing from casual employees.
La Trobe vice-chancellor John Dewar said the university continued to back-pay staff who were unintentionally underpaid in 2021 while working to resolve the marking underpayments.
Several La Trobe casual workers will appear at Tuesday’s Senate estimates committee to discuss the dispute.
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Originally published as La Trobe University in new payment dispute
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