Union’s call on wage theft is a ‘political stunt’ says uni body

The National Tertiary Education Union’s call for a parliamentary inquiry into university wage underpayment is a “political stunt”, says the university industrial body.

Casual university lecturers were underpaid in dozens of universities.

The National Tertiary Education Union’s call for a parliamentary inquiry into universities’ systemic underpayment of wages is a “political stunt”, according to the universities’ industrial body.

The Australian Higher Education Industrial Association, which represents 35 universities, said universities are not trying to cover up the problem, which it ­admits is proving to be embarrassing for universities.

In its third report on university “wage theft”, the union said last week that 30 universities had underpaid their staff, mainly casuals, by $203m over the past decade, plus another estimated $10m underpaid by Deakin University.

In last year’s university annual reports, nine institutions made provision for another $168m to cover repayment of underpaid wages.

“What the union movement has omitted to say is that nearly all of the instances of wage ­underpayments have been self-reported by universities,” said the AHEIA’s executive director Craig Laughton.

“This is not the act of an organisation or sector that is trying to cover anything up.

“Furthermore, when identified, universities have reacted swiftly to properly compensate and repay all affected staff. Surely this illustrates good faith.”

Mr Laughton said the union’s call for a parliamentary inquiry “completely undermines” the federal government’s plan to set up the Australian Tertiary Education Commission to oversee the university sector.

He said it was ironic the NTEU complained about poor governance in universities yet was proposing to bypass ATEC.

NTEU national president Alison Barnes said the university industrial body was “attacking the messenger”.

“Universities are only self-­reporting after sustained pressure from NTEU members for fair pay and restitution of stolen wages, and after the Fair Work Commission explicitly pointed to higher education as a priority sector for wage theft,” Dr Barnes said.

“By not disputing a single fact in any of the NTEU’s wage theft reports, AHEIA has silently accepted that wage theft on an industrial scale is occurring at universities.”

She said as publicly funded institutions, the “nothing-to-see-here approach” of AHEIA’s members was risible.

“Australian universities must be accountable,” Dr ­Barnes said. “A parliamentary inquiry will do just that.”

In its 2022-23 annual report, the FWC said it had recovered $116.4m in wages for university employees since July 2020.

It blamed several factors for universities’ failure to pay wages owed, including high numbers of casual workers, poor governance and management, lack of centralised HR, lack of investment in payroll and time-recording systems, and the devolution of control over HR and pay issues to individual faculties.