By Cat Woods -
Thousands of University of Wollongong staff were underpaid wages and superannuation over a period spanning a decade. The university has been ordered to repay $6.6 million and the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) has attributed what happened to poor governance and payroll system errors. This isn't the end either. A contrition payment to the Commonwealth of $130,000 has been ordered and a second contrition payment is being finalised.
Equally important are the legally binding mitigation requirements, which form part of an enforceable undertaking (EU) with the Fair Work Ombudsman.
Following staff inquiries about pay anomalies, the University of Wollongong (UOW) reported itself to the ombudsman in 2023. The University contravened the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), University of Wollongong (Professional Services Employees) Enterprise Agreement 2019 (PSEA 2019) and the University of Wollongong (Academic Staff) Enterprise Agreement 2019 (ASEA 2019). FWO investigations discovered thousands of staff had been underpaid weekend penalty rates, public holiday pay, overtime, and entitlements owed for leave, redundancy, severance, and retirement.
In total, 5,340 present and former employees were underpaid between 2014 and 2024. These employees primarily worked in non-teaching, casual roles including librarians, researchers, IT workers, and administration positions.
Zoe McQuillan is Associate Director at Cowell Clarke, where her focus is on employment, industrial law, and work health and safety.
She says, “Self-reporting is not something employers are legally obliged to do when they discover a potential problem or a problem that has resulted in underpayments, but it something that should be encouraged and we know the Ombudsman encourages it because it means that the business is being transparent and upfront about an important issue that has arisen in their business and then takes action to identify and address underpayments promptly.”
She explains that it can also mean that the business can potentially reach an agreement with the Ombudsman on the actions to remediate the underpayments as part of enforceable undertakings. These can include actions such as making contrition payments and conducting training of relevant staff.
McQuillan says, “This can have the effect in some cases (of) avoid(ing) costly and time-consuming litigation and significant penalties being imposed.”
Ombudsman Anna Booth claimed the university’s payroll system was not fit for purpose and was incapable of ensuring that employees’ enterprise agreement entitlements would be paid correctly. Employees will be repaid amounts ranging from $20 to more than $36,000. To date, Booth has told the ABC that most staff had been paid back the due amounts, but close to 200 former employees had not been located to ensure their repayments were fulfilled.
The UOW will be required to collaborate with a consultative body made up of university management, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), and employees. It will also be required to overhaul its payroll system to comply with Fair Work laws, and to ensure staff undertake training on their obligations under Fair Work laws.
Under the terms of its Enforceable Undertaking, the university committed to (in addition to giving evidence of its back-payments to FWO):
- providing the FWO information about the systems and process improvements it is implementing to ensure future compliance;
- ensuring relevant staff complete additional training regarding their Fair Work obligations;
- commissioning, at its own cost, two independent audits to check it is meeting all employee entitlements – and rectifying any underpayments found;
- maintaining an employee payments complaint and review mechanism;
- convening a standing body to provide a regular form for consultation between the University of Wollongong, its employees and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) on matters of workplace relations compliance;
- prioritising and embedding within its Risk, Audit & Compliance committee the monitoring of compliance with Fair Work instruments; and
- making a $130,000 contrition payment to the Commonwealth Consolidated Revenue Fund. A second contrition payment will be made after the finalisation of two issues still under review at the time of signing the EU.
A broader national problem with university governance
Far from a one-off case, the UOW may represent merely the tip of an iceberg for compliance with Fair Work laws and full, correct payment of entitlements to employees within universities. Booth told the ABC that since 2022, the Fair Work Ombudsman has been in contact with at least 38 universities that demonstrated “a failure in governance and payroll system”. This spurred the NTEU president Alison Barnes to state that the UOW case is a warning bell of a much broader problem in governance of universities, amounting to “a $278 million national wage theft scandal”, she told the ABC.
In December 2024, the University of Melbourne also entered into an EU, owing $72 million in underpayments to employees.
Booth told LSJ Online, “The sector became a key focus for the FWO in 2022 following intelligence, including evidence from various parliamentary inquiries, that there are systemic underpayment issues relating to universities failing to comply with their own enterprise agreements when it comes to the remuneration owed to casual academic and professional staff.”
Recoveries for workers have been significant. The FWO recovered over $218 million for more than 110,000 employees in the higher education sector between 1 July 2019 and 30 June 2025, including $67.9 million for more than 49,000 employees in the 2024-25 year alone (noting that the higher education sector classification may include some employing entities that are not universities).
“The FWO is making enquiries into or investigating several other universities which have not yet been publicly named.”
As of 30 September 2025, there are 18 ongoing Fair Work Ombudsman matters relating to universities in the public domain.
Booth says, “The FWO is making enquiries into or investigating several other universities which have not yet been publicly named. While investigations in the sector are ongoing, we acknowledge the steps being taken by universities to cooperate with us and improve compliance.”
Senate report revealed chasms between management and staff
The Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee agreed to examine the quality of governance at Australian higher education providers. The result, delivered early in September, detailed a lack of transparency and accountability, and division between the managerial class and the academics.
Booth says, “The governance expectations for universities have been set out in the Statement of Regulatory Expectations issued by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) and developed in collaboration with the FWO and the Australian Universities Accord Panel. From this year, Australian universities will be required to submit annual reports to TEQSA concerning the expectations for an initial period of 2 years. The annual reports will comprise an attestation by the Vice-Chancellor that the university has met the expectations and an index of evidence to support the attestation.”
McQuillan asserts that the real problem goes beyond payroll issues.
She says, “Universities have essentially locked academics out of decision-making. The Senate committee report found that university councils operate with minimal input from the people actually doing the work, which is exactly why academics feel undervalued.”
“So, is this a sign of systemic problems? Absolutely.”
She adds, “What stands out from the report is how opaque everything’s been. Senior pay, consultant spending, how decisions get made, none of it’s transparent. And when you layer that on top of academics having minimal representation on governing bodies, you get a perfect recipe for resentment. The committee essentially said universities need elected staff and student representatives on councils, proper transparency around executive pay, and genuine consultation before major changes happen. So, is this a sign of systemic problems? Absolutely. It appears to be a pattern across the sector where universities have drifted towards a corporate management style that sidelines the academic community.”
Beyond universities, a national storm of underpayment actions brewing?
McQuillan says, “I believe many industries could be and are affected by underpayments. Australia has some of the world’s most complicated awards to ensure employees get paid fairly. With the recent criminalisation of wage theft, it has brought both self-reporting and other reporting to the mainstream.”
McQuillan says technology is at the root of most problems relating to underpayments, either because it’s limited in how it can deal with the complexities of modern awards or enterprise agreements, or it has not been configured in the correct way to trigger the correct payments for particular shifts and scenarios.
“This is one of those critical areas where the law and technology intersect and overlap and it is essential for employers to bridge that gap between award interpretation and how their payroll systems work in order to address the requirements of the modern awards or enterprise agreements,” she says.
McQuillan believes lawyers have a role to play in preventing and mitigating underpayment problems, and structural integrity.
“In my role as an employment lawyer, I am regularly called upon to assist with award interpretation and proactive compliance checks to prevent issues from cropping up down the track. Working with external experts is a great way to do a systems health check and make sure that payroll and associated systems are operating appropriately, in compliance with the law and that the organisation or business has adopted correct interpretations of instruments.”
If you worked for The University between 2014 and 2024 and have any questions relating to your employment, please contact (02) 4221 4000 or email pay-remediation@uow.edu.au.
Alternatively, anyone can contact the FWO via www.fairwork.gov.au or on 13 13 94.
