Macquarie University has admitted to underpaying staff almost $2 million, impacting over 3,000 employees.
The university has told the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) that 3,191 professional employees, primarily working casually, have been underpaid $1,913,000 between 2017 and 2023.
“In a university that has one of the highest student-to-staff ratios with a vice-chancellor on upwards of $1 million a year, I find it absolutely disgusting that our most vulnerable staff are being systematically underpaid to this extent,” says NTEU Macquarie Branch Vice-President Mahyar Pourzand.
The NTEU has raised concerns over the payment and treatment of casual employees at Macquarie University. It was previously revealed by the NTEU that Macquarie University had underpaid staff a total of $674,000 between 2016-2022, affecting 1,033 casual employees.
Pourzand notes that “Macquarie University is boasting that they initiated this review on their own accord, but given the rampant wage theft across the sector, it would have been an inevitability that the regulator would come knocking.”
In June 2024, the NTEU called for an urgent parliamentary inquiry into university wage theft, which is now on track to exceed $400 million.
NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes says that “university wage theft is a national disgrace that demands a federal parliamentary inquiry to stamp out the rotten culture that’s allowing this behaviour to flourish.”
From 2014-2023, the University of New South Wales is confirmed to have underpaid staff by a total of approximately $11 million, impacting around 1,500 individuals. Further, UNSW included an additional $70,847,000 in wage theft provisions, as published in their 2023 report.
The NTEU notes that insecurely employed staff, meaning those employed casually or on fixed-term contracts, are disproportionately impacted by wage theft. Common types of wage theft in universities include paying for fewer hours than those worked, paying piece rate for lecture preparation or marking as opposed to actual time worked and sham contracting to undercut Award and Agreement entitlements.
“We must end the insecure work crisis, which has left two in every three university staff without a permanent job, while fixing the broken governance model,” says Barnes. “Without an urgent federal government intervention, wage theft is sadly going to continue because university leaders think they can get away with it.”