“We remain committed to strengthening the University’s governance structures, systems and processes and this continues to be an area of focus for our institution,” said the UM Vice-Chancellor. Source: Shutterstock.
The University of Melbourne (UM) will start processing back payments this week for unpaid wages to casual staff from 2013 to 2018.
In total $22 million will be paid to 15,000 current and former casual employees with each payment set to average just under $1500. Investigators from Deloitte went through 3.2 million pay slips to come to this figure.
The payouts come after an investigation found that UM underpaid several employees and had threatened to fire them if they tried to claim payment for their work.
“Findings of the review indicate the most common issues were incorrect payment for the causal minimum engagement period (59% of payments) and for weekend and public holiday overtime (29% of payments),” UM said.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Duncan Maskell added that the university is committed to resolving the issue.
“We apologise to any past or present employees who have not been paid correctly for work they performed. We are committed to remediating these discrepancies and fully complying with our obligations,” he said.
UM says they will aim to improve their auditing process as well as make changes to other parts of their payment systems.
Staff who were overpaid will not be asked to make repayments to the university.
A Fair Work ombudsman was tasked with carrying out legal action in August this year.
Ombudsman Sandra Parker had revealed that in 2016 and 2017, two academics were told they would not be re-employed the following year if they were to complain and seek payment for the extra hours worked.
“If you claim outside your contracted hours, don’t expect work next year,” was a similar statement a UM rep had said to the two academics, according to Ms Parker.
“We treat allegations of employers taking action to stop or prevent employees from claiming their lawful entitlements very seriously. Adverse action and coercion directly undermine workplace laws and the ability of employees to exercise their lawful rights,” Ms Parker said.
UM says that all payments will be made over the coming months.
