Deakin University to back pay $2.9m to underpaid casual staff

“This should not have occurred”: Geelong-based Deakin University is set to issue remediation payments to nearly 450 sessional academics, which will total almost $3 million.

In May of last year, Deakin University made a voluntary disclosure to the Fair Work Ombudsman after identifying “inadvertent underpayment” of staff throughout the institution, relaying to the academics affected that they would “fully remediate affected staff and improve our systems and processes”.

Now – and in an email sent to the university’s staff earlier this morning (Tuesday, 11 November) – Deakin vice-chancellor Professor Iain Martin said the university had undertaken a significant exercise to identify where else in the organisation such underpayments may have occurred.

From today, he wrote, remediation payments will begin to be issued to about 440 eligible staff who participated in the review examining sessional academic staff arrangements across the university.

“We expect the total amount remediated in this initial stage of our remediation program to be about $2.9 million, excluding interest and superannuation. These underpayments occurred between 2017 and 2024 and involve both current and former staff,” he said.

“I am disappointed and sorry to be making this announcement today, particularly given my commitment to helping rebuild trust in our universities.”

“I want to reaffirm Deakin’s commitment to transparency, honesty, and accountability when mistakes are made. Today’s announcement is an essential step in that process, but I acknowledge that this should not have happened.”

Martin wrote that he wants to reassure colleagues that “there continues to be a vast amount of work underway to ensure our systems are as robust as possible and that we comply with all our workplace obligations”.

This work includes, he outlined, updated contracts and information for sessional staff at the time of engagement, updated guidelines for sessional academics and supervisors, and mandatory timesheet declarations.

The university is also working with leaders, he continued, on a continuing program of education to ensure all supervisors understand the critical role they play in verifying colleagues are correctly paid for all the hours they work.

“Whilst maintaining clear, straightforward systems and processes to underpin our remuneration policies and the enterprise agreement, it is incumbent on all leaders across Deakin to apply them consistently and without variation,” he said.

“In closing, I want to apologise once again. This should not have occurred, and we are committed to making things right.”

In a separate email to university staff, deputy vice-chancellor of university services Kerrie Parker detailed the measures that Deakin has implemented to strengthen compliance, including: updated contracts and information for sessional staff at the time of engagement, refreshed guidelines for sessional academics and supervisors, mandatory timesheets for declarations, a new compliance module for supervisors of sessional academic staff, and targeted education sessions on pay obligations.

According to the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), Deakin’s required back payments take the national confirmed university wage theft tally beyond $284 million.

NTEU Deakin branch president Professor Reece Walters said the announcement was a hard-won and long-overdue outcome.

“This is a major victory for NTEU members at Deakin who have fought hard against wage theft over many years,” he said.

“To management’s credit, they are working with the NTEU to repay the staff owed millions of dollars.”

He added: “There’s almost certainly more people affected than just this initial announcement, so we’ll be working hard to ensure every staff member past and present get every cent they’re owed.”

“We’re encouraging all casual Deakin staff who believe they may have been underpaid to contact the NTEU for advice and support.”

NTEU Victoria division secretary Sarah Roberts added that the state continues to be ground zero for university underpayments.

“Once again we’re seeing casual staff bearing the brunt of wage theft, which speaks volumes about the devastating impact of rampant casualisation across our universities,” she said.

“The fact that casualised workers continue to be the primary victims of wage theft is a direct consequence of universities’ deliberate strategies to maximise insecure employment.”

NTEU national president Dr Alison Barnes said the situation at Deakin was part of a much wider problem.

“University wage theft is a national disgrace that demands national action,” she said.

“The NTEU won’t take a backwards step in our campaign for major reform of the broken university governance model that’s allowed wage theft to become baked into business models. We need governments to make university executives accountable for wage theft, casualisation and other serious issues in our public institutions.”