There is a court case against Torrens U over paying casual academic staff.
No it is not the Fair Work Ombudsman’s March win in the Federal Court, where a full bench agreed that marking and teaching were separate tasks under the HE award and Torrens could not pay people a single amount for both.
This one is brought by lawyers Hayden Stephenson, (“group actions that bring meaningful change”) for lead applicant, Torrens U lecturer Tito Scohel. The claim is the university has not paid casuals for a range of separate tasks under the HE Award and is due to start in the Federal Court on November 27.
The case is expected to raise broader claims for payment than heard by a full bench of the Federal Court, but that judgement, delivered by Justice Lee sets a context for this new action against Torrens.
In that judgement, Justice Lee set out the scope of modern awards, which, “operate across an entire industry and must be interpreted so that they function coherently across a wide range of employment settings. It is not in dispute that the allocation of teaching loads and demarcation between permanent and casual workloads at universities in Australia is far from homogeneous. Casual academic work varies considerably. Some employees deliver occasional lectures. Others conduct tutorials. Others undertake marking tasks across subjects in which they have no teaching role. Entirely unsurprisingly, assessment design similarly varies markedly across institutions and disciplines,” he wrote.
“The construction of the Award therefore cannot turn upon the specific teaching arrangements of a single institution or the particular workload pattern of one employee. The instrument must be interpreted so that its categories of work retain meaning and operate sensibly across that diversity.”
Hayden Stephenson invites casual academics at other institutions covered by the HE award to consider joining a class action if they believe that they have received a single payment for separate tasks set out under the HE award. They will likely be teachers at private providers which employ staff under the award rather than their own enterprise agreements.
But the case will be watched at public universities, each with their own agreement. In July ’25, the Federal Court found against Monash U in a case that depended on what pay rates apply to. The university argued that the Enterprise Agreement casual tutorial rate applied to consultation time with for students. The NTEU argued that the agreement specified a separate and higher rate. Justice Snaden found for the union that within the meaning of the EA consultations were not “tutorial work.”
Torrens U applied to the High Court for special leave to appeal the recent Federal Court judgement. It was dismissed in August.