The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) Sandra Parker recently claimed that wage underpayment has become a systemic issue in Australia’s tertiary education sector. Accordingly, the FWO launched an investigation into 11 of the nation’s universities for potentially underpaying their staff.
“Allegations of universities underpaying their employees by systematically failing to follow their own enterprise agreements are of great concern. It is important that where we find alleged serious contraventions we take employers to court and seek penalties to deter non-compliance”, Parker said.
“We expect to be taking high-level enforcement action against a number of universities this year, and urge all to prioritise their compliance”.
A new report from the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) claims at least 23 universities and colleges have publicly admitted to underpaying casual staff more than $83 million over the past few years.
The University of Melbourne is the worst offender, admitting in a recent email to staff that it was in the process of back paying $45 million, while Monash, Newcastle and Charles Sturt, RMIT and Sydney University have all have been found to have underpaid staff by almost $5 million or more.
“This report exposes what we’ve known for some time – systemic wage theft has been baked into universities’ business models”, said Alison Barnes, national president of the NTEU.
Dr Jessica Marian, a casual in the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts, was underpaid $25,000.
“Most of my underpayments were for marking. We were paid to mark 4000 words per student per semester for one hour. It’s not what students expect and it invariably takes twice as long”, Dr Marian said.
Peter Coaldrake, chief commissioner with the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, told Senate Estimates last week that “the entire sector has been on notice from both TEQSA and FWO about the challenge of underpayment for some time now”.
“It is doubly uncomfortable that it is nearly always those in junior, casual or less secure roles who are disadvantaged”, Coaldrake said.
The whole wage theft fiasco coincides with recent complaints from the National Union of Students about the decline in the quality of teaching at universities, which was encapsulated by second-year Melbourne University commerce student, Jadyn Lam.
“We continue to pay the same fees as we would in-person, for poor quality teaching and not an ounce of care for our wellbeing”, Lam said.
“Today we are inundated with copious quantities of outdated lectures that we pay thousands and thousands of dollars for – possessing microphone and production quality to that of early 2000s YouTube”.
“Additionally, an influx of demotivated students are apparent due to limited access to on-campus tutorials as well as tutors who fly through content online”, Lam said.
Who can be surprised, given universities have bloated their administrative departments while skimping on teaching staff:
The entire Australian university system has become a marketing scam to lure in full fee-paying international students while they minimise the wages of rank-and-file academics. Universities don’t care much about academia or teaching, only running education like a profit-maximising private corporation to enrichen vice-chancellors and senior management.
In turn, our universities have shredded their social contract.
Sadly, the Albanese Government has doubled down on the scam by uncapping international student work hours for another year, while also extending post-study work rights and migration pathways. As a result, student visa arrivals have soared to new heights.
This international student boom will ensure that vice-chancellors and senior executives continue to make pay dirt while rank-and-file staff continue to suffer from poor pay and conditions, and entry and teaching standards are gutted.
Basically, Australia’s universities have been transformed into blood-sucking corporations focused on maximising revenue over quality.
Teaching staff numbers have been cut and entry standards have been trashed in a bid to drive up numbers of international students. And this is being helped along by the federal government, which has effectively turned student visas into low-skilled work and residency visas.
Vice chancellors and senior administrative staff privatising the gains while teaching staff, students and the broader Australian community wears the costs.
