Uni Tas says penalty rates and minimum hours payments have not always been “correctly applied” and how much staff are owed is being worked out (CMM Friday)

But there’s another category that universities around the country have got wrong – marking payments to casual academics. CMM asked the U Tas if marking rates were also being investigated and the university replied, “we will be looking at all aspects of how our casuals are paid.”

What can happen is that people are paid the (lower) rate for routine work, scoring tests and the like, when they should be paid for, “marking requiring a significant exercise of academic judgment.”  In November RMIT offered $10m to cover cases of casuals underpaid for marking (CMM November 26).

The U Tas enterprise agreement specifies the rate for simple marking ranges from $43.85 to $51.96 an hour and high-skill pay is $60.49, so if people were incorrectly paid the lower rate it could add up.

The best way of finding out if this has been occurring, is to ask casual academics what they received.