USyd Casuals Network Releases Interim Report into Wage Theft, Underpayment

Ellie Stephenson Reports.

The USyd Casuals Network has released a report detailing wage theft and endemic unpaid overtime at the University of Sydney. The report audited the paid and unpaid hours of 19 staff across 28 contracts, eventually finding that 84% of participants performed unpaid work and a total of $47 897 in unpaid wages over six weeks. The Casuals Network argued that this represented “systemic wage theft” and the reliance of university management on the exploitation of casual labour.

The report pointed to a trend of increasingly precarious labour and noted that “casualised staff and the NTEU have issued numerous warnings about their poor working conditions”. It argued that the issue is common among Australian universities, highlighting controversies about wage theft at the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne earlier this year. 

The findings show that the participants, who were mainly from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, performed 753 hours of unpaid work over six weeks, which translates to almost a day of unpaid work per week for each person. The report found that a significant portion of the unpaid work stemmed from administrative tasks, with participants being vastly underpaid for the time spent doing administrative work like writing UoS outlines and consulting with students. 

Specifically, the report showed that staff were given “only 48 minutes a week to cover emails, student consultations, preparation of online materials, lecture attendance for tutors, meetings with coordinators, completion of compulsory HR modules, interaction with HR, filling in of timesheets and all other associated work that does not fit within ‘teaching preparation’.” 

Several participants were paid for less than half their work, with time spent preparing for the semester going uncompensated. Additionally, casual researchers were not adequately paid for their research. The report attributed these problems to casualisation, suggesting that casual staff doing high-level academic work without being paid for it had become “normalised” at the University. No one involved in the audit was able to complete their administrative tasks in the hours they were paid for administration.

The issues facing casual staff are also gendered; female staff had around 2.5 times more stolen wages than male staff. For every dollar women received, they were not paid 98 cents. This is consistent with broader trends, as women are more likely to be casuals. The report noted that the fact women are disproportionately in precarious labour sits uneasily with the University’s commitment to gender equality in their workforce.

The report concludes with five demands directed at the University, asking it to pay back all unpaid wages, update casuals schedules of payment to avoid future underpayment, do a full-scale audit of the treatment of casual staff at the University, commit to ending wage theft in the next Enterprise Agreement, and reduce casualisation. 

The Network has circulated a petition asking for support for its demands.