The regulator is partnering with the Fair Work Ombudsman

The Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency announces a webinar with the FWO for universities, “on the subject of wage underpayments and how to support the sector to address this issue.”

This is a significant move by TEQSA which prefers to work with individual institutions and only takes a sector-wide approach when it has significant sector-wide concerns, as it has had witht admission standards for international students.

TEQSA’s announcement comes as RMIT is accused of underpaying casual teaching staff. In this case there are allegations that people were paid a lower rate than applied to work requiring them to make academic judgements when marking.  CMM understands the Fair Work Ombudsman has approached RMIT.

“If ever RMIT is provided with evidence to suggest that any employee may not have been correctly paid, it will investigate the matter. In instances when an error may have inadvertently occurred, RMIT would of course rectify the error,” the university stated yesterday.

There are said to be no signs of a resolution of claims of casuals being underpaid for marking following a meeting this week between casual staff, union officers and  RMIT management.