Fair Work Ombudsman, Sandra Parker, Senate Estimates, Wednesday 

“They haven’t focused on governance; they have not employed the expertise they need. They have not centralised their human resources functions, so they are operating across faculties and schools. A faculty will do it one way, and another faculty will do it another, and there’s not a consistent approach. They haven’t understood their own enterprise agreements and haven’t had it pointed out to them that they are fundamental to the way they need to pay people. In the case of universities, most of them have enterprise agreements that require hourly rates, not piece rates. They also haven’t appropriately invested in payroll or time-recording systems. When they’ve had HR and pay issues dealt with by academic managers, they haven’t had that expertise they’ve needed to take it seriously or do it properly. It’s a longstanding issue that’s developed over quite a long period of time.”

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