Monash University faces another major pay claim from casual staff

Monash University is facing a major back pay claim from casual staff over non payment for time spent consulting with students.

Monash University is facing another major back pay claim from casual staff. Photo: Andrew Henshaw

Monash University is facing another major back pay claim from casual staff which the National Tertiary Education Union has threatened to take to the Federal Court if it is not resolved.

In a letter sent to Monash vice-chancellor Margaret Gardner on Monday, the union said the university had breached the enterprise agreement applying to university staff by failing to pay tutors for “office hours” in which they were required to make themselves available to students.

“Monash must take immediate steps to ensure casual academics are paid for all the teaching they do, and to pay back-pay for all affected staff,” said Monash University NTEU branch president Ben Eltham.

“We have also demanded Monash engage a third party to undertake an external audit into historic underpayments. If the university doesn’t come to an acceptable resolution, we will take them to the Federal Court.”

Dr Eltham said the union did not have an estimate of how much it believed was owed in back pay. But he said it went back at least to 2015 and was across two faculties at a minimum.

The latest back pay claim is additional to the $8.6 million which Monash University agreed to repay casual staff last year following underpayments which were mainly due to “inconsistent descriptions of teaching activities”.

In the letter to Professor Gardner, the NTEU says that casual tutors in the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies were told they were expected to offer consultation to students during “office hours” – with one hour of consultation time for every three hours of paid teaching – and notify students of the times they were available in their offices.

Furthermore the casual tutors were told that the office hours “were not separately remunerated”.

Another school, the School of Social Science, also told casual tutors that they would not be paid for student consultation hours. The union says it has evidence from its members in both schools, as well as from the Faculty of Business and Economics, that casual tutors’ student consultation hours were scheduled and notified to students, but the tutors were not separately paid for them.

In the letter the union points to clauses in the enterprise agreement which say that payment to casual tutors for “contemporaneous consultation” with students “prior to and following a tutorial” is included in the payment for the tutorial.

However consultation with students which is not “contemporaneous” with a tutorial – such as “office hours” – is listed as work that must be separately paid for.

While the letter notes that human resources staff at Monash have said that scheduled student consultation hours in the same week as a tutorial should be considered to be “contemporaneous”, the union says this interpretation is wrong.

Michael Lazarus, a Monash casual tutor in philosophy and politics, said the consultation time for students was “really an important thing”.

“The university is giving us a choice between saying no and lowering education standards, or saying yes and doing unpaid work,” Dr Lazarus said.

Monash University said on Tuesday that it was “thoroughly considering” the information in the letter and was seeking further information from the NTEU.

“Monash is strongly committed to ensuring all staff are paid correctly in accordance with the University Enterprise Agreement and all relevant legislation,” the university said.

“Following a voluntary review initiated in 2020 and 2021, the university has taken significant steps to improve its systems and processes for payment of staff.

“Monash values the role our sessional staff play in the delivery of excellent education and takes our obligations to pay our staff very seriously.”