Daily London
The University of Adelaide is under investigation after admitting to underpaying more than 830 former casual academic staff $1.25 million over eight years.
The institution confirmed it uncovered underpayments to staff between March 2017 to May 2025 after ramping up its auditing and payment monitoring due to the prevalence of underpayments within the industry.
The audit found that hundreds of current and former casual academic staff with a PhD or in a course coordinator role were not paid the higher rates they were entitled to.
This led to 838 staff being underpaid about $1.25 million.
“While this represents less than 0.05 per cent of salary payments over that period, it is still unfortunate and very regrettable,” a University of Adelaide spokesperson said.
“The university deeply regrets that the underpayments occurred and is remediating staff as quickly as possible.
“Impacted current and former staff have been contacted and repayments have started.”
The university has notified the Fair Work Ombudsman.
“We will continue to implement, enhance, and strengthen our processes and controls,” the spokesperson said.
“The university’s auditing and monitoring activities are continuing, and if any other instances of underpayments are identified, affected staff will be contacted by the university and remediated as quickly as possible.”
The Fair Work Ombudsman said it is investigating the underpayments.
“We expect any employers that identify non-compliance to fully cooperate with our investigations,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
“It is not appropriate to comment further.”
Any staff from the university who may have concerns should contact the ombudsman.
Fair Work began targeting systemic non-compliance in the university sector in 2022, which the National Tertiary Education Union has labelled as a “wage theft epidemic”.
The ombudsman has entered into enforceable undertakings with the University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney, University of Newcastle, La Trobe University, University of Melbourne, Charles Sturt University and Griffith University.
It has won court penalties against the University of Melbourne and has ongoing legal action against the University of NSW.
The University of Wollongong has recently repaid $6.6 million to more than 5000 underpaid staff.
