Wollongong University has almost finalised underpayments to 5340 staff. Photo: UOW.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has blamed poor governance and fundamental payroll system errors for the underpayment of more than 5000 Wollongong University staff.
The university has been forced to back-pay more than $6.6 million to 5340 current and former employees it underpaid between 2014 and 2024.
It had also underpaid employees’ weekend penalty rates, public holiday pay, overtime rates, and various leave entitlements, as well as entitlements related to redundancy, severance and retirement.
Payments range from less than $20 to more than $36,000, including superannuation and interest.
The total amount comprises underpaid wages and entitlements of more than $4.9 million, interest of more than $1.1 million, and superannuation (plus interest) of more than $630,000.
The majority of staff have been paid, however the university has been unable to locate about 200 former employees to back-pay them.
The university has signed an Enforceable Undertaking (EU) with the Fair Work Ombudsman, which includes a contrition payment of $130,000 as well as the introduction of a range of measures to ensure compliance with workplace laws going forward.
It will be required to make a second contrition payment after the finalisation of two matters still under review.
Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth said an EU was appropriate as the university had cooperated with the FWO’s investigation and demonstrated a strong commitment to rectifying its non-compliance issues.
“The University of Wollongong deserves credit for acknowledging its breaches and the underlying issues, and committing significant time and resources to put in place corrective measures that will ensure both full remediation of impacted staff and improved compliance for the future,” Ms Booth said.
“The matter serves as a warning of the significant long-running problems that can result from an employer failing to have appropriate checks and balances to ensure workplace compliance.
“We expect universities to meet their legal obligations under their own enterprise agreements and underlying awards.”
The majority of the underpaid employees were casual professional services staff in a variety of non-teaching roles. However, some full-time and part-time employees were also underpaid including academic and support staff. Staff roles impacted range from administration officers to IT officers, and librarians to researchers.
Most of the underpayments were the result of the university failing to pay casual professional staff for a minimum engagement period of at least three hours per shift and underpaying the penalty rates they were entitled to for shift work.
The university became aware of its underpayments after receiving queries from staff and self-reported the non-compliance to the Fair Work Ombudsman in 2023.
Under the EU, the university has committed to rectifying all outstanding underpayments in full, plus interest and implementing a range of measures to ensure future compliance, including:
- Providing the FWO with information about the systems and process improvements it is implementing to ensure future compliance
- Ensuring relevant staff complete additional training regarding their Fair Work obligations
- Commissioning, at its own cost, two independent audits to check it is meeting all employee entitlements – and rectifying any underpayments found
- Maintaining an employee payments complaint and review mechanism
- Convening a standing body to provide a regular forum for consultation between the university, its employees and the National Tertiary Education Union on matters of workplace relations compliance
- Prioritising and embedding within its Risk, Audit and Compliance Committee the monitoring of compliance with Fair Work instruments (such as enterprise agreements and awards); and
- Informing staff of the EU through intranet and public website notices, all-staff email and written notice to affected employees.
