Addressing casual payments at Swinburne

Swinburne University of Technology has identified unintentional underpayments to some casual employees at the university and at Swinburne College.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Pascale Quester has today written to all employees, sincerely apologising for what has occurred and outlining how Swinburne is responding and the remediation process being undertaken.

A copy of her letter is below.

Addressing casual payments at Swinburne

Dear colleagues,

Today I am writing to inform you of underpayments that have been identified by the University that impact some casual employees at Swinburne University of Technology and Swinburne College.

From the outset, I acknowledge the frustration many of you will feel at hearing this news, and as Vice-Chancellor, I sincerely apologise. The underpayments were unintentional but should not have occurred. The University and Swinburne College are ensuring that full remediation, together with interest and superannuation occur as soon as possible.

What has happened

Following a review of casual payments, timesheets and payroll data, we undertook a detailed analysis and identified underpayments to five cohorts of casual staff, across the review period between 2017 and December 2023.

The impacted cohorts are confined to casual employees and are a result of discrepancies relating to misinterpretation and misapplication of clauses in relevant enterprise agreements and/or systems limitations, that have now been addressed. The five cohorts are:

Swinburne University of Technology

• Casual academic unit conveners

• Casual academic research assistants

• Casual vocational education and training teachers

• Casual academics who deliver lectures/tutorials

Swinburne College

• Casual teachers
  • including those employed directly by the university pre-15 February 2020.

The issues differ across the cohorts and include issues concerning minimum engagement payments for casual teachers, incorrect application of repeat tutorial/lecture payments for some casual academics and incorrect pay rates in respect to some casual unit convenors and research assistants.  

We have identified 1,699 current and former employees who are impacted by this issue, who are owed $2.6 million by the University. There are also 114 current and former employees, owed $245,610 by Swinburne College.

How we have responded

We engaged external legal advice and professional accounting and financial services firm KPMG to assist and independently calculate the amounts owing to each impacted employee, both current and former, and to validate the results.

This will ensure remediation is made proactively, fairly, reasonably and as a priority. Impacted employees will receive full back-pay of wages, together with interest and applicable superannuation.

Swinburne has voluntarily self-reported this matter to the Fair Work Ombudsman and will work constructively with them. We have also notified other regulators and both the National Tertiary Education Union and the Australian Education Union.

We have taken significant steps to ensure the same or similar issues do not happen again, including:

• Implementing additional validation and configuration of our HR and pay systems to ensure checks are in place to prevent a recurrence.

• Conducting additional training sessions for relevant managers, especially in VET, regarding minimum engagement periods for casual teachers.

• Making several preventative process and system improvements and communicating and training relevant managers and staff on these.

Ensuring future compliance

Swinburne is committed to ongoing compliance, ensuring staff are paid correctly at all times, and we continue to review our systems, processes and payments to ensure continuous improvement.

Separately to the issues identified, we are undertaking additional compliance and assurance steps to further ensure full pay compliance and that other issues do not arise in the future. If any further issues are identified, they will be fully addressed as a priority. 

Next steps

If you are impacted, you will be contacted individually this week with further details. Current staff will receive full back-pay of wages, including interest on wages, in an out of cycle pay run on the 7th of May.

We are also contacting former employees using the most recently available contact information on file to verify details and accounts to enable swift remediation.

For those impacted staff who transferred to Swinburne College in February 2020, you will receive a separate letter from the College in relation to its review of this issue. Swinburne College is a joint entity and a separate employer with a separate payroll system.

Further information

I understand you may have more questions, and I urge you to visit the dedicated pay remediation page which includes a comprehensive list of Frequently Asked Questions. Swinburne College staff can access dedicated information here.

We have mobilised additional support from People and Culture and set up a dedicated contact centre to assist employees. University staff can email payupdate@swin.edu.au or call 03 9214 8600 and select option 2, and College staff can email SCsessionals@swin.edu.au.

Again, this should not have happened, and on behalf of the University, I sincerely apologise. We will continue to update you on our work as appropriate.

Kind regards,
Professor Pascale Quester 
Vice-Chancellor and President