Macquarie University admits to almost $2m in unpaid wages
A review into staff payments has revealed that staff at the university were underpaid by $1,913,000 between January 2017 and the end of 2023.
Macquarie University has uncovered further instances of staff being underpaid, with the university admitting that it underpaid staff by almost $2 million.
Macquarie University has told staff that 3,191 mostly casually employed professional employees were underpaid $1,913,000 between January 2017 and the end of 2023.
This follows the previously announced $674,000 in underpaid wages that was uncovered as part of its payment review, which affected 1,033 casual academics at Macquarie over a similar six-year period.
The university first initiated a payment review of casual academic staff payments following widespread reports of underpayment in the tertiary sector.
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has called for a federal parliamentary inquiry into university wage theft, with the national total of underpayments now on track to pass $400 million.
NTEU Macquarie branch vice-president Mahyar Pourzand said the NTEU has continuously raised concerns over treatment of casual staff at Macquarie and criticised management’s own reviews into underpayments.
“Macquarie University is boasting that they initiated this review on their own accord, but given the rampant wage theft across the sector, it would have been an inevitability that the regulator would come knocking,” said Pourzand.
“In a university that has one of the highest student-to-staff ratios with a vice-chancellor on upwards of $1 million a year, I find it absolutely disgusting that our most vulnerable staff are being systematically underpaid to this extent.”
NTEU national president Dr Alison Barnes said the underpayment of wages across universities is a “national disgrace” that demands a federal parliamentary inquiry.
Barnes said that urgent federal government intervention is needed to ensure the underpayment of wages across universities does not continue.
“Despite an avalanche of wage theft incidents at almost every public university in Australia, not a single vice-chancellor has lost their job or faced any accountability,” said Barnes.
“Once again we see wages being stolen – the toxic twin of insecure employment – from casually employed university staff.
“We must end the insecure work crisis, which has left two in every three university staff without a permanent job, while fixing the broken governance model.”
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