RMIT to face court over union claims of alleged $1m wage theft

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has launched Federal Court proceedings against RMIT University, alleging that it underpaid student counsellors for at least a decade, and saying that affected staff are potentially owed more than $1 million in stolen wages.

The NTEU’s proceedings were recently filed in the Federal Circuit Court and have been brought on behalf of NTEU member and clinical psychologist Michael Swadling, who is seeking $87,000 in alleged underpayments since 2019. The test case, the union said, could open the door for 15 current counsellors and additional former staff to recover years of alleged stolen wages.

NTEU said, in a statement, that the case centres on RMIT requiring counsellors to be psychologists or social workers who hold postgraduate degrees in psychology or social work, “while paying them at a lower classification reserved for undergraduate-qualified positions”.

In a statement provided to HR Leader, a spokesperson for RMIT said that the university “takes its compliance obligations very seriously”.

“RMIT is aware of the litigation and fundamentally disagrees with what has been claimed,” the spokesperson said.

“RMIT will rigorously defend its position in regard to the historical classification of roles that have been identified as part of these proceedings.”

NTEU national president Dr Alison Barnes said that the case exposes how universities exploit their most vital workers.

“Here we have highly qualified mental health professionals responding to student crises and preventing tragedies, yet their employer has underpaid them for years,” she said.

“RMIT decided these counsellors needed postgraduate degrees to do their jobs safely and effectively, but chose to pocket the difference by classifying them incorrectly.”

"This is a betrayal of the crucial professional staff universities rely on to keep vulnerable students safe.”

NTEU Victoria division secretary Sarah Roberts said that the case highlights the broader crisis of professional staff exploitation.

“Mental health support has never been more critical on our campuses, yet the very people providing this essential service have been deliberately undervalued and underpaid,” she said.

“If successful, this case will send a clear message to all universities that they must properly classify and pay thousands of professional staff doing complex, specialised work.”

NTEU member and delegate Michael Swadling, who has worked as a student counsellor at RMIT since 2015, said that the fight is about respect as much as money.

“When you're supporting students in distress and responding to crises, it's hard not to feel devalued when the institution treats your role as something less. This case is about fairness, but it's also about respect for the people doing the work,” he said.

“It's embarrassing to realise that our university encourages students to pursue master's programs in psychology and social work, and then undervalues those same qualifications in their own staff. The expertise they celebrate in the classroom is the same expertise they've underpaid in the workplace.”

“Universities are in the business of teaching the importance of evidence-based mental health care – but they haven't applied that same respect to their own clinicians,” Swadling continued.

“You can't claim to champion wellbeing and then short-change the people providing it.”