Melbourne University provost Nicola Phillips has apologised for underpayment at the institution and announced the university would overhaul its employment model and "dramatically" reduce its reliance on casual staff in response to the scandal.
"We're dismayed that it's happened … In this case, we have not done the right thing. And we are working really hard to put it right," she told 7.30 in an exclusive interview.
The university sector has been plagued by revelations of widespread underpayment over the past two years, with a Senate inquiry reporting half of all universities had been implicated and the Fair Work Ombudsman currently investigating at least a dozen.
Professor Phillips announced Melbourne University would overhaul its employment model and scale back its heavy reliance on casual staff, which she acknowledged was partly to blame for the widespread underpayment at the institution.
"We are looking at dramatically reducing our reliance on casual contracts as a way of employing staff," she revealed to 7.30
"We've identified that this kind of model is not one that serves the university well, and it's not one that serves our employees well, and we're determined that for the future, we're going to rethink this model, reduce our reliance on casual staff and make sure that we put in place something that is more sustainable for the future."
Professor Phillips said the university "hadn't put a figure" on how many casual roles would be reviewed or converted to permanent positions, nor the time frame during which the overhaul would take place.
'Underpayment rampant across sector'
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and some experts, like ANU higher education policy professor Andrew Norton, have been calling for a reduction on the reliance of casual staff at universities, as they too believe casualisation is a major factor driving underpayment.
"Underpayment of wages is rampant across the sector," NTEU head Alison Barnes told 7.30.
"The problem would be resolved if employment relations in universities were secure, if people were employed in secure, ongoing and permanent jobs."
Professor Norton said, "academics who've got a permanent contract or on a fixed-term contract for a number of years, we really haven't seen the high error of underpayment for those people".
"The scope for error is much, much lower than it is for casuals," he said.
"And so that's really where we need to move to a larger percentage of the academic workforce being on one of these more general contracts that do not have detailed tasks by the hour."
'Like a smack in the face'
Despite Melbourne University's ongoing review aiming to stamp out underpayment, 7.30 can reveal that the school of dance at the university's prestigious Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) is the latest institution to face claims of underpayment.
It is in a dispute with the NTEU, which is trying to recover wages for staff.
Former Melbourne University casual dance tutor Hamish McIntosh is one of those claiming underpayment.
He began teaching dance at the VCA in 2019 but last year was informed his role and the classes he taught would be reclassified, which meant he would be paid less.
"To quote the letter itself, management suggested that the classes that myself and my colleagues delivered were not epistemologically based, and that we lacked the intellectual expertise for the classes to be classified as tutorials proper," Mr McIntosh told 7.30.
7.30 has seen letters from management detailing the reclassification, which state "most of our practical classes do not meet the Enterprise Agreement Definition of what constitutes a Tutorial, ie a supplementary class that is related to a Lecture".
Mr McIntosh said he found the letter and characterisation of staff expertise offensive.
"I have a first-class master's in dance studies, I'm internationally published in dance pedagogy, presented research on dance pedagogy and I've been teaching in universities since 2018.
"So it's kind of like a smack in the face [to be told] you lack the intellectual expertise for this work to qualify as a regular tutorial."
7.30 understands the university has now reversed its decision to reclassify the tutorials — however, Mr McIntosh has since left and estimates he's owed around $5,000 in wages, which he is working with the union to recover.
"Which for viewers may not sound like a lot of money," he told 7.30, "but for me as a postgraduate student, that's a tremendous amount of money. I relied on that money."
Professor Phillips declined to comment on the school of dance issue specifically but promised, "if a problem has occurred, we will put it right".
"I want to be really clear that it's not the approach of the university to reclassify roles for that purpose," she told 7.30.
"There are some complexities about role classifications, but where they arise, we work them through with our staff and with the union as well."
The NTEU is calling for the federal government to introduce legislation forcing universities to employ more full-time staff.
In a statement, Education Minister Jason Clare told 7.30 the new government was planning to criminalise wage theft.
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