University of Sydney to repay nearly $13m to underpaid casual staff

The University of Sydney will repay nearly $13m in lost wages to nearly 13,000 casual staff who were underpaid from 2014 to 2020.

The University of Sydney will pay $12.75 million to staff for underpaid wages.

The University of Sydney will repay $12.75m in wages to nearly 13,000 staff who were underpaid from 2014 to 2020, vice-chancellor Mark Scott said on Monday.

Most of the money is owed to casual, non-academic staff and the repayment follows a year-long review of payments made to more than 36,000 people over nearly seven years. About 600 will receive back pay of over $5000.

Professor Scott apologised for the errors. “Clearly there is no ­acceptable margin of error when it comes to ensuring staff are paid correctly, and this situation is unacceptable,” he said.

“On behalf of the university, I … want to assure you that immediate and swift action is being taken to amend our processes and repay monies owed, including superannuation and interest.”

The review, undertaken by PwC, found that casual, non-academic staff had been underpaid for overtime and many had not ­received agreed minimum engagement payments that usually entitle them to three hours’ pay when the period of work is less.

The university’s commitment to repay its staff ­follows the University of Melbourne’s announcement on Friday that it had repaid $9.5m to more than 1000 academic casual staff after years of underpayment. Several other universities are also investigating possible underpayment of casual employees.

The National Tertiary Education Union said that wage theft was “rampant” in the higher education sector and that it believed the repayments at the University of Sydney were “just the tip of the iceberg”.

“It’s great the university has rectified those payments but we believe there is potentially millions more to be paid to casual academic staff,” union state secretary Damien Cahill said.

Professor Scott said some instances of overpayment of staff had also been revealed by the ­review, and where this had led to a staff member owing money to the university, the university would not seek to recover it.