As well as not being paid for all the hours worked casual academics get cross when they are not paid according to expertise

This can be an issue all over, as Stuart Andrews from the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association told the Senate Economics Committee’s inquiry into employee remuneration in March, “There are different rates of pay for the same amount of time taken to perform the activities. That is one form of complexity in virtually all enterprise agreements.”

It’s certainly a complexity causing conflict at Uni Melbourne, where the National Tertiary Education Union complains that faculty managements sometime try not to pay people with PhDs the rate for highly-qualified teachers.

The union is now escalating this into an all of university dispute,  arguing that people with PhDs should be paid the specified rate if their doctorate is relevant.

“A person teaching Australian history whose PhD is in string theory would not be eligible for the higher payment. However, if their PhD was in any field of history or Australian studies, they would be eligible for the higher rate. It does not have to be the identical discipline, but merely a relevant one. Nor is ‘discipline’ to be read narrowly” union branch president Annette Herrera states.

She wants management to tell everybody deciding people’s pay that the PhD rate for casuals teaching in a relevant discipline should be paid, “regardless of whether any decision has been made as to whether such a qualification is ‘required.”