Thousands of casual tertiary academics will receive back-pay worth over $10 million after a major university settled a wage theft claim.
All current and former casual teaching associates who performed unpaid student consultation over the past nine and a half years will be eligible for back-pay expected to cost eight figures after Monash University settled in the Federal Court.
The university will also pay a $450,000 contrition payment to the National Tertiary Education Union and report monthly on the progress and scale of the remediation program.
For co-lead applicant Michael Ciaravolo, who received $5429 and an additional compensation following the case, the settlement left him elated, vindicated and relieved.
"This was about a massive number of people being pushed into a practice of wage theft by a sector that is now being pulled up for it regularly, and it's about the legal system ... rightly recognising that and doing what's right," Mr Ciaravolo told AAP.
The union filed Federal Court proceedings in September 2022 on behalf of casual teaching associates Mr Ciaravolo and colleague James Kent, who were among thousands directed to deliver student consultations without separate payment.
During the proceedings, Justice John Snaden rejected Monash's argument this work was already covered by tutorial rates.
The court found Monash breached its 2014 and 2019 enterprise agreements and contravened the Fair Work Act by failing to maintain proper records.
Mr Ciaravolo said the unpaid consultations affected casual workers financially to varying degrees because it prevented some from doing other work.
"This practice (meant) you were effectively there all the time to make these hours available despite not being remunerated for it," he said.
The union's Victorian secretary Sarah Roberts said the settlement vindicated every casual academic who has felt the devastating consequences of wage theft.
"Monash fought us every step of the way - even trying to retrospectively change its own enterprise agreement to avoid their obligations - but justice has prevailed," she said.
"The scale of this landmark settlement reveals the truth about Australian universities: systemic wage theft underpins their business models. This stops now."
Monash has since amended its practices to align with the agreed resolutions, involving the interpretation of the 2014 and 2019 enterprise agreements, which had previously been applied for many years without dispute.
“This agreement provides resolution to a Federal Court decision that clarified a long-standing ambiguity in our enterprise agreement as to what types of student consultation should be covered in the payment staff receive for ‘tutorial’ work," a Monash spokesperson said.
“The university will undertake a proactive remediation program to identify and compensate affected sessional staff who were required to perform scheduled student consultation and were not already separately paid."
Federal union president Alison Barnes said the case sent a powerful message to the sector that wage theft in universities is systematic, deliberate, and indefensible.
Underpayments and provisional payments across the sector have exceeded $450 million nationally.
