UC Vice-Chancellor Bill Shorten apologised for the payment errors. Photo: Ian Bushnell.
The University of Canberra has found that errors with its payroll system have resulted in the underpayments of casual professional staff to the tune of $1.522 million.
A review found overtime and minimum shift entitlements weren’t automatically applied through the payroll system, with some instances dating back to 2019.
Vice-Chancellor Bill Shorten gave his assurance to current and former staff that the issue would be remediated immediately.
“I personally felt it was important to inform all our staff and to apologise on behalf of the University,” he said.
“The University will be relentless in our pursuit of compliance. Since starting in my role as Vice-Chancellor here at UC, I have repeatedly stated my expectations that UC staff will be paid correctly and receive their entitlements. I remain committed to ensuring that this is the case.”
The issue has affected 1421 current and former staff, with the average remediation standing at $406 over six years. There was also a flow-on impact on superannuation payments.
UC has begun evaluating and validating all casual academic staff data to make sure their payments are in line with their Enterprise Agreement.
“This work is being prioritised, and information will continue to be made available as the University completes this work,” said Mr Shorten.
“Importantly, in consultation with council, I have requested that robust safeguards, education and process improvements be put in place to prevent this from occurring in the future.”
A new Payroll Compliance Working Group has been stood up to oversee remediation of the identified underpayments and the implementation of future safeguards.
Mr Shorten said these would include preventative system and process measures, an education program for managers and staff, continued audits and compliance reviews, and more HR resources to ensure payroll accuracy.
“Payroll process reviews and compliance audits were raised by council as early as 2021. It has since come to light that previous spot checks, reviews, and limited scope audits were undertaken to provide council with those assurances,” he said.
“However, the [additional] comprehensive payroll review that I have overseen identified the underpayment issues that now require remediation.”
National Tertiary Education Union ACT division secretary Dr Lachlan Clohesy said this was yet another example of why casualised staff should be given more job security.
“This is disappointing news. Professional staff are the staff who keep the University running and deserve to be paid correctly for the work that they do,” he said.
“Where casualisation occurs, wage theft often follows.”
NTEU national president Dr Alison Barnes said the continued instances of wage theft being exposed in the sector showed that greater intervention from governments was also needed.
“Shamefully, this takes the national university wage theft tally past $280 million with more than 100,000 staff affected,” she said.
“The wage theft epidemic has been the canary in the coal mine of the broader governance disaster we’re witnessing in our universities.
“That’s why we need urgent action from governments to fix the broken governance system that allows university executives to inflict industrial-scale wage theft with impunity.”
Original Article published by Claire Fenwicke on Region Canberra.
