The University of Canberra has disclosed $1.5 million in underpayments relating to casual professional staff over the last six years, as well as an investigation into potential casual academic underpayment.
Quotes attributable to NTEU ACT Division Secretary Dr Lachlan Clohesy:
“This is disappointing news. Professional staff are the staff who keep the University running and deserve to be paid correctly for the work that they do.
"Where casualisation occurs, wage theft often follows. This is why it's so important to prioritise job security.
“These issues are historic, but should never have happened. We’ll work constructively with the University to make sure that these issues don’t occur again.
“There is still work to do in terms of university governance at UC.
“UC recently had a governance review, which was supported by Nous, the consultants behind Renew ANU. It is not good enough to benchmark UC against university governance in the sector, when it is clearer than ever that governance is broken elsewhere too.
“The Vice-Chancellor has expressed his support for more staff representatives on UC Council. It’s time to turn those words into action. More voices on UC Council from those at the coalface help to avoid the sorts of issues UC has disclosed today. UC has a chance to be a leader on university governance.”
Quotes attributable to NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes:
“Shamefully, this takes the national university wage theft tally past $280 million with more than 100,000 staff affected.
“The wage theft epidemic has been the canary in the coal mine of the broader governance disaster we're witnessing in our universities.
“That’s why we need urgent action from governments to fix the broken governance system that allows university executives to inflict industrial-scale wage theft with impunity.”
Contact: Dr Lachlan Clohesy ([email protected], 0418 493 355)
