Another day, another university wage theft story.
This time the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) contends that RMIT University has been underpaying casual academics since 2014. The union alleges that casual staff have received the ‘standard’ rate of pay for marking students’ work, rather than the ‘academic judgment’ rate of pay. The NTEU’s Victorian assistant secretary Sarah Roberts says the difference in these pay rates is about $20 an hour.
The NTEU estimates that casual academics have been underpaid by up to $17 million in total and has referred the issue to the Fair Work Commission (FWC), which claims the investigation of universities’ alleged underpayment of staff is putting a strain on the regulator’s resources:
