Deakin University will be dragged before the Fair Work Commission over allegations of systemic wage theft worth millions of dollars for casual academics. The ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has lodged an application with the Commission. The Union will seek assistance from the industrial umpire to deal with its long-running dispute with Deakin, which is alleged to have underpaid casual academics for marking. The NTEU lodged a dispute with the University in June, alleging systemic underpayments occurred through implementing ‘piece rates’ which paid academics per course, student or assessment rather than time worked, as required by the enterprise agreement. NTEU members allege this system means casuals are often working for two or three times the amount they are being paid for, resulting in millions of dollars of underpayments over the last decade. In its original dispute notice, NTEU demanded that the university:
- Cease paying a piece rate for casual marking
- Backpay all affected staff, to be administered by a joint NTEU-University working group
- Revise the university’s marking practices/guidelines
- Issue an apology
The NTEU has provided the university with hundreds of pages of testimony, contracts, and other supporting documents detailing wage theft across all four faculties of the university since that time. The Union met with representatives for the university on multiple occasions and exchanged a significant volume of correspondence. Because Deakin has not agreed to the demands of the union or its casual staff, the matter has been referred to the Fair Work Commission. “Deakin University has left us with no choice but to escalate this dispute in the Fair Work Commission,” said NTEU Victorian Division Secretary Sarah Roberts. “The University’s response to these very serious allegations has been appalling. We’ve provided clear evidence of system wage theft only for them to refuse to pay back the money that is owed. “We know casual employment and wage theft go hand in hand, with people fearing for their precarious jobs at risk of exploitation. “Wage theft keeps happening. That tells us something is clearly rotten with universities’ governance which needs to be investigated through federal and state parliamentary inquiries.” Deakin University joins a long list of other Australian universities who have been called out by the NTEU for using illegal piece rates. A near identical dispute was raised by the NTEU in 2019 at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts, which ultimately led to more than $5 million being paid back and dozens of other unlawful payment practices being uncovered leading to over $32 million in wage remediation payments to date. A marking piece rates dispute involving La Trobe University was also referred to the Fair Work Commission earlier this year.
