The University of Wollongong will complete more than $6.6 million in payments, including interest and superannuation, to 5,340 underpaid staff as part of entering into an Enforceable Undertaking (EU) with the Fair Work Ombudsman.
Under the EU, the university must also make a contrition payment of $130,000 and implement a broad range of measures to ensure compliance with workplace laws going forward. The university will also make a second contrition payment after the finalisation of two matters still under review at the time of signing the EU.
The majority of the underpaid employees were casual professional services staff in a variety of non-teaching roles. However, some full-time and part-time employees were also underpaid including academic and support-staff. Staff roles impacted range from administration officers to IT officers, and librarians to researchers.
Underpaid employees were primarily located at the university's main campus in Wollongong.
Most of the underpayments were the result of the university failing to pay casual professional staff for a minimum engagement period of at least three hours per shift and underpaying the penalty rates they were entitled to for shift work.
The university failed to comply with its obligation to pay the employees the minimum engagement period entitlement set out in the Higher Education Industry - General Staff Award as required by an undertaking to one of its Enterprise Agreements. When securing approval from the Fair Work Commission for that Enterprise Agreement, the University of Wollongong had provided the Commission with an assurance it would provide its staff with that minimum entitlement.
Key causes of the widespread underpayments were the university's poor governance processes as well as fundamental payroll system errors.
The university also underpaid employees' weekend penalty rates, public holiday pay, overtime rates, and various leave entitlements, as well as entitlements related to redundancy, severance and retirement.
The university became aware of its underpayments after receiving queries from staff. It self-reported its non-compliance to the Fair Work Ombudsman in 2023.
In total, the University of Wollongong is back-paying more than $6.6 million to 5,340 current and former employees it underpaid between 2014 and 2024.
This is made up of underpaid wages and entitlements exceeding $4.9 million, interest of more than $1.1 million, and superannuation (and interest on superannuation) of more than $630,000. The large majority has already been paid. The university has been unable to locate about 200 former employees to back-pay them.
Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth said an EU was appropriate as the university had cooperated with the FWO's investigation and demonstrated a strong commitment to rectifying its non-compliance issues.
"The University of Wollongong deserves credit for acknowledging its breaches and the underlying issues, and committing significant time and resources to put in place corrective measures that will ensure both full remediation of impacted staff and improved compliance for the future," Ms Booth said.
"The matter serves as a warning of the significant long-running problems that can result from an employer failing to have appropriate checks and balances to ensure workplace compliance. We expect universities to meet their legal obligations under their own enterprise agreements and underlying awards."
Back payments to impacted individual employees range from less than $20 to more than $36,000, including superannuation and interest.
Ms Booth said the commitments secured under the EU, including a consultative body for ongoing collaboration between university management, employees and their union, would help drive cultural change across the University of Wollongong, and were an example for the wider university sector.
"Improving universities' workplace compliance is a priority for the Fair Work Ombudsman. We look forward to continuing to work with the leadership teams at universities nationally to assist them to do the sustained, smart work required to ensure their employees benefit from full compliance with workplace laws," Ms Booth said.
Under the EU, the University of Wollongong has committed to rectifying all outstanding underpayments in full, plus interest, and implementing a range of measures to ensure future compliance, including:
- providing the FWO with information about the systems and process improvements it is implementing to ensure future compliance;
- ensuring relevant staff complete additional training regarding their Fair Work obligations;
- commissioning, at its own cost, two independent audits to check it is meeting all employee entitlements - and rectifying any underpayments found;
- maintaining an employee payments complaint and review mechanism;
- convening a standing body to provide a regular forum for consultation between the University of Wollongong, its employees and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) on matters of workplace relations compliance;
- prioritising and embedding within its Risk, Audit and Compliance Committee the monitoring of compliance with Fair Work instruments (such as enterprise agreements and awards); and
- informing staff of the EU through intranet and public website notices, all-staff email and written notice to affected employees.
The University of Wollongong's contrition payments will be paid to the Commonwealth Consolidated Revenue Fund.
Since announcing in 2022 that addressing systemic non-compliance in the university sector was a priority, the Fair Work Ombudsman has entered into Enforceable Undertakings with La Trobe University, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, the University of Technology Sydney, the University of Newcastle and Charles Sturt University and Griffith University; secured court penalties against the University of Melbourne; and commenced ongoing legal action against the University of NSW.
