The University of Melbourne is completing payment of $72m to staff it underpaid, plus making a $600,000 contrition payment to the Commonwealth Government as part of a comprehensive agreement with the Fair Work Ombudsman.
“Systemic failures in compliance, oversight and governance processes were key causes of the underpayments,” the FWO states.
But while UoM refers to a “number of employees” being underpaid the FWO states the university has or is completing payments to “more than” 25,000.
It is part of Enforceable Undertaking which requires the university to, “implement a broad range of measures to prevent future non-compliance with workplace laws.” “Systemic failures in compliance, oversight and governance processes were key causes of the underpayments,” the Ombudsman states.
The FWO adds that given “wide-ranging outcomes” it has stopped its Federal Court case regarding 14 casual academics in the Arts Faculty 2017-2020, whom the university admits to underpaying and not keeping records for.
According to the Ombudsman, most underpayments cover casual academic and professional staff, across all faculties and campuses. Under the terms of the Undertaking, Uni Melbourne acknowledges it underpaid entitlements, including:
- Minimum wages
- Minimum engagement entitlements
- Casual sessional teaching
- Casual non-sessional activities rates
- Shift loadings and overtime entitlements.
The university is also required to:
- Have a “comprehensive enterprise resource planning system” in place by August, including HR and finance, payroll and rostering and time-and-attendance systems
- Ensure centralised oversight and accountability, including a “worker voice mechanism”
- Establish University Council and Executive subcommittees on workplace relations compliance
- Create a central employment compliance directorate.
“These measures build on significant compliance reforms by the University of Melbourne in recent years since the FWO’s investigation began,” the Ombudsman states.
This is a big achievement for the Ombudsman of the “pour encourager les autres » kind, which has long focused on universities. In 2022, it reported on the system in general ; “our current investigations have uncovered a trend of poor governance and management oversight, a lack of centralised human resources functions and inadequate investment in payroll and time-recording systems”.
One of the terms that Uni Melbourne has now agreed to is, “taking a leading role in helping drive sector wide changes by sharing learnings and seeking to discuss compliance issues in the Group of Eight universities forum.”
