The University of New South Wales failed to keep employee records for seven years in a breach of the Fair Work Act, which Federal Court judge Brana Obradovic called, “systemic. long-standing and long-lasting.”
She delivered her judgement on Christmas Eve, ending a long-running case brought against the University by the Fair Work Ombudsman.
The university admits its business school did not keep employee records for casual academics over seven years, as required by the Fair Work Act, and did not include prescribed information on their pay slips. It also breached employment conditions in its enterprise agreement. All up, casuals were underpaid $13.5m between 2017 and 2022.
However, it took UNSW a while to acknowledge its failings. The FWO was tipped-off about the failure to keep proper records and contacted the university in 2018. Justice Obradovic states, “despite its various meetings, production of documents and information, as well as answering notice to produce, UNSW did not, at any point in time, voluntarily disclose its record keeping failures to the FWO." The university only admitted its failures after the Ombudsman commenced legal proceedings.
And when it did start work to rectify record keeping, “it did so without any sense of urgency.”
“Once it was aware of the inadequacies of its system, while UNSW did take steps to rectify its system, the steps taken were part of an overall overhaul and system change, rather than being focused on the compliance issues which had been identified.
“While UNSW itself recognised as early as December 2019 that something as simple as time sheets would likely address the failures in its record keeping requirements, it did not implement them in any meaningful form, until approximately the time these proceedings commenced.”
The court imposed a $213,000 penalty.
Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth says litigation “was the only appropriate response.”
“It is completely unacceptable for an employer’s record-keeping practices to be so poor that they prevent our inspectors from assessing what hours its employees have worked and whether employees have received their full lawful entitlements.”
The case follows dozens of university staff under-payment matters dealt with by the FWO, including a Federal Court case against the University of Melbourne.