Sydney Uni underpaid staff ‘tens of millions’

The scandal could cost the financially troubled institution tens of millions of dollars.

University of Sydney vice-chancellor Michael Spence. Picture: Jonathan Ng

The University of Sydney has admitted to underpaying some casual staff for the past six years, which could cost the financially troubled institution tens of millions of dollars.

Vice-chancellor Michael Spence told staff on Thursday the underpayments appeared to mainly affect casual employers and the university had commissioned a review to determine the number of staff affected and the extent of the underpayments.

However, based on estimates, the university may have underpaid staff up to $6m last year alone, and far more over the past six years — the period in which payments will be reviewed by consultants PwC.

Last week it was revealed the University of Melbourne had underpaid more than 1000 of its casual teaching staff. Following talks with the National Tertiary Education Union, the university is expected to compensate them.

Dr Spence said every effort would be made to deal with the causes of the underpayments at the University of Sydney.

“I genuinely regret that errors have occurred in the payment of employee entitlements and want to assure you that any errors were completely unintentional,” he said.

The errors appeared to be mainly due to poor processes for handling timesheets and other payroll system failures, he added.

NTEU national president Alison Barnes said the University of Sydney had “no excuse for wage theft”.

“In the boom years it has sucked in the student fees while simultaneously underpaying staff. This is repugnant and unacceptable,” Dr Barnes said.

“Universities never seem to make mistakes when it comes to paying exorbitant salaries to managers, like the $1.6m paid to Michael Spence.”

Following the loss of thousands of international students this year because COVID-19, the University of Sydney is making major cuts to deal with a $470m budget shortfall, which it says it has now “largely mitigated”.

Dr Spence said the PwC review is likely to take months to complete but the payment errors would be rectified as soon as possible. He said that, in some cases, staff had been overpaid, but the university would not attempt to recover overpayments.