In short:
The Australian National University has self-reported to the Fair Work Ombudsman an error that saw 2,290 former and current casual staff miss payments totalling about $2 million during the past 11 years.
The National Tertiary Education Union says with wage theft "rampant across higher education" the announcement was "disappointing but not surprising".
What's next?
The university said it was "deeply sorry" for the error, and will pay all affected staff any missed payments they are owed, including superannuation entitlements, plus interest.
An investigation by the Australian National University (ANU) has uncovered the underpayment of more than 2,000 former and current casual employees.
In a statement, the ANU confirmed 2,290 casual employees had missed payments as a result of an error in timesheet processing.
The university said it had undertaken an extensive investigation of the issue, which spanned all 11 years it has used online timesheets for casuals, and estimated the missed payments totalled $2 million.
The median missed payment per impacted staff member was $600.
The ANU said the missed payments were caused by unactioned timesheets submitted by casual staff that were not brought to the university's attention "due to a system configuration".
The university said it would pay all affected staff any missed payments they were owed, including superannuation entitlements, plus interest.
ANU Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell said the university was "deeply sorry" for the error.
"ANU apologises to all staff affected by this error and any hardship, challenges and stress this may have caused," Ms Bell said.
"We value all our staff and the vital contribution they make to our operations as a world-class university and are deeply sorry that some staff have been impacted by this error.
"ANU is taking immediate and comprehensive action to remedy this situation and to ensure it does not happen again."
The vice-chancellor said the ANU self-reported the error to the Fair Work Ombudsman, and had taken corrective steps to avoid similar errors in future.
"ANU has also notified staff that our investigations have identified as being impacted by this error and is working to remediate all missed payments as soon as possible," Ms Bell said.
"While this error has occurred in the past, we are confident that we have taken the necessary corrective measures to ensure this doesn't happen again.
"ANU is committed to recognising and compensating all staff for their hard work and vital contribution to our university and its operations."
The university said it expects the full remediation of payments for missed casual timesheets to be finalised "within the next 10 to 12 weeks".
During its investigation into the missed payments the ANU identified a secondary payment issue it said was "potentially affecting up to 120 staff undertaking emergency and on-call duties".
The university said it was investigating that issue, and would pay any outstanding allowances.
The ANU is not alone in having underpaid employees, with the government department responsible for overseeing federal workplace and employment condition having underpaid staff between July 2022 and August this year.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation also underpaid 1,907 current and former workers more than $12 million in overtime and penalty rates between 2012 and 2019.
'Disappointing but not surprising': Union
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) said wage theft is "rampant across higher education", and has called for urgent national action to address insecure work and "broken governance systems".
It said with these underpayments, Australian university staff had now suffered more than $205 million in confirmed wage theft in recent years.
NTEU ANU branch president Millan Pintos-Lopez said the ANU's announcement was "disappointing but not surprising".
"The most vulnerable workers in our industry and across the sector continue to bear the brunt of wage theft," Mr Pintos-Lopez said.
"These workers go above and beyond for this institution and the ANU couldn't even pay them properly for it.
"The bare minimum in terms of respect is paying workers for the work they do."
Lachlan Clohesy, NTEU ACT Division Secretary, said if missed payments like these are occurring at Australia's national university, it can happen anywhere across the nation.
"If this can happen at a university of ANU's prestige, and with ANU's resources, that should make it abundantly clear that this can – and is – happening at universities right across the country," he said.
Mr Clohesy said the underlying issue that allowed wage theft to continue was insecure work.
"These underpayments were only possible due to the casualised nature of the work," Mr Clohesy said.
"We know that when workers are employed insecurely, they are less likely to report workplace issues, which is why this can go undetected for so long."
He said as well as being less likely to report issues, casual employees are also some of the lowest paid workers at a university, meaning missed payments may have a larger impact on them.
"Small variations can have a huge impact. Casual employees are more likely to live pay cheque to pay cheque and often need to support families as well.
"At its worst, underpayment can cause difficult decisions about delaying food, medicine, or bills."
He said to avoid underpayment issues, all Australian universities should be complying with their enterprise agreements, but "too often they're not".
"It is not an issue of complexity – these universities have huge, well-resourced HR departments. This is a governance issue," he said.
"It is time the federal government intervened through the Australian Universities Accord process, as universities have proven themselves unable or unwilling to stamp out wage theft."