The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has called for urgent national action after the Australian National University became the latest institution embroiled in a wage theft scandal.
The university has admitted underpaying 2290 workers $2 million over 11 years, blaming a systems error for casual timesheets not being processed.
ANU also may not have been paying up to 130 staff on-call allowances when they worked in emergencies.
With wage theft rampant across higher education, the NTEU is calling for federal action to address insecure work and a broken governance system that have allowed the practice to be baked into universities' business models.
Australian university staff have now suffered more than $205 million in confirmed wage theft in recent years.
The total figure on track to exceed $384 million once money universities have allocated for other underpayments in their annual reports is factored in.
Quotes attributable to NTEU ANU Branch President Millan Pintos-Lopez:
"The recent announcements of wage theft at the ANU are disappointing but not surprising.
"The most vulnerable workers in our industry and across the sector continue to bear the brunt of wage theft.
"These workers go above and beyond for this institution and the ANU couldn't even pay them properly for it.
"The bare minimum in terms of respect is paying workers for the work they do."
Quotes attributable to NTEU ACT Division Secretary Dr Lachlan Clohesy:
"Wage theft is a symptom of what is not well in Australia's universities, but the underlying disease is insecure work.
"These underpayments were only possible due to the casualised nature of the work.
"We know that when workers are employed insecurely, they are less likely to report workplace issues, which is why this can go undetected for so long.
"This is a governance issue which must be addressed by the Australian Universities Accord process."
