Expect a boycott of straight bats at tomorrow’s Senate committee hearing on unlawful underpayment of employees

Perhaps not in the morning session, when the National Tertiary Education Union is on first, followed by “Casualised, Unemployed and Precarious University Workers,” (presumably not all of them).

In its submission to the inquiry, the NTEU sets out the core of the case that “wage theft” is common in universities; “the principal modes of wage theft for casual academics in public universities are: failure to pay for work required (including paying for less hours than the task takes) and unilateral classification of work to lower pay rates.”

Union reps might present examples of casuals not being paid the rate for jobs, as set out in university enterprise agreements. There are universities which have already acknowledged examples of underpayment and made-good wages owed, work is continuing at others. So, questions bowled-up should be benign, at least from Opposition and Greens senators.

But perhaps not so much when the employer-body appears, the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association, which represents most, but not all universities.

AHEIA’s submission distinguishes between, “the concept of ‘wage theft,’ which implies deliberate and systemic underpayment, from inadvertent underpayment of employees.” The former can occur AHEIA asserts, “as a result of complexities associated with payment regimes … or with complexities associated with the interaction of superannuation entitlements under EAs, superannuation fund trust deed provisions and ATO rulings.”

And, “where such issues are identified, they are properly addressed by employees or their representatives raising these directly with universities, with any underpayments being rectified as soon as practicable.”

Which might lead to a question about what can happen when payment rules are so complicated that nobody notices a problem for years, which has occurred with superannuation at multiple universities.

Or when middle managements employing casual teaching staff get it wrong.

As David Ward from UNSW acknowledged in the university’s submission. “In the case of the tertiary education sector, circumstances such as a necessarily high level of autonomy and self-management by academic staff, the typically devolved nature of administrative arrangements, and the relative complexity of applicable Enterprise Agreements, can create conditions in which a risk of underpayment may inadvertently occur.”

Which was surely the worst it can be for casuals surviving semester to semester, at least until work disappeared last year in the COVID-19 crisis.