5,400 university staff underpaid in $8.3m wage blunder

Griffith University will fork out more than $8.34 million in payments to staff after underpaying staff.

After signing an enforceable undertaking with the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO), Griffith University is set to complete more than $8.34 million in payments, including interest and superannuation, due to widespread underpayments.

The employees impacted by these underpayments were spread across all four major university groups including arts, education and law, business, health, and sciences, and residing at all six campuses located across Queensland.

The underpayments were discovered by the FWO by way of self-reporting from the university back in March 2022. A combination of insufficient training, insufficient data collection, non-existent payroll, human error, and various deficiencies across the payroll system as a whole caused the widespread underpayments.

Some of the university’s wage failures included not paying the correct rates, not paying meal allowances, split shift rates, and not correctly paying employees for minimum daily engagement periods.

Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth commended the university for cooperating with the FWO’s investigation.

“Griffith University 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,” said Booth.

“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.”

Overall, the university is back paying more than $8.34 million for work performed by staff between July 2015 and June 2024. To date, the university has remediated $5.83 million (excluding superannuation and interest) to 5,226 employees, with individual underpayments ranging from less than $1 to more than $92,400.

Griffith University is just the latest in a plethora of Australian universities that have been bound to enforceable undertakings over widespread underpayments.

As previously reported by HR Leader, La Trobe University is locked into paying more than $10.77 million for similar contraventions, with the University of Sydney and University of Melbourne paying $23 million and $72 million to staff, respectively.

“’Improving universities’ workplace compliance is a priority for the Fair Work Ombudsman. We look forward to working with the leadership teams at universities nationally to assist them to do the sustained, smart work required to ensure full compliance with workplace laws,” said Booth.