Reform, not band-aids
The Australian Higher Education Industrial Association (AHEIA) is calling for urgent reform of workplace instruments that govern university staff pay and conditions. The association says the sheer complexity of the sector's awards and enterprise agreements (EAs) is the root cause of payroll errors, not bad faith. Enterprise agreements in the sector can run to hundreds of pages or more and require cross-referencing with outdated awards and multiple layers of state and federal legislation. According to AHEIA, this makes 100% compliance extremely difficult even for experienced payroll and IR legal experts.
Craig Laughton, Executive Director of AHEIA, said: "Universities don't want to see anyone underpaid. But when agreements run to hundreds of pages, layered over antiquated awards and inconsistent legislation, it's little wonder errors occur. These mistakes, whether underpayments or overpayments are a symptom of a broken system."
In a big scheme of things errors are relatively small, but reforms are critical
Universities have proactively worked with the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) to self-report and rectify payroll errors, demonstrating a constructive and appropriate approach to governance. Using public records, AHEIA's modelling of underpayment against total employment costs from 2019 to 2023 indicates that these incidents account for just 0.2% of the sector's payroll budget. However, AHEIA warns that focusing solely on governance oversight or compliance reporting will not solve the root problem. During the recent Senate committee inquiry into governance, Mr Laughton highlighted recent court contested interpretations of workplace provisions between the NTEU and Monash University and the Fair Work Ombudsman and Torrens University as examples where even the courts have struggled to interpret ambiguous provisions. These examples demonstrate that the system itself is broken, and without reform of workplace instruments and legislation, errors will persist no matter how good governance arrangements and compliance frameworks are.
A call to overhaul the system
Mr Laughton said urgent action is needed:
"Governance and reporting frameworks cannot fix archaic rules that even judges find difficult to interpret. The only real solution is to modernise awards and simplify enterprise agreements, so they become wage integrity enablers rather than inhibitors."
AHEIA is calling for a collegiate effort involving the government, sector unions, TEQSA and FWO and universities to work to overhaul workplace instruments, simplify rules, and create a fair, transparent framework that minimises errors and safeguards staff entitlements.
About AHEIA AHEIA is the federally registered employer association for the higher education sector, representing the majority of Australia's public universities on workplace relations matters.
