The National Tertiary Education Union has slammed Swinburne University of Technology management for threatening vulnerable staff members with debt-collectors after their own payroll mistake led to overpayments.
Around 550 casual and part-time staff, with the least capacity to repay, received between $300 and $900 as a result of a payroll error in November 2021.
As the majority are casual staff without regular income, many requested repayment plans that were met with an inflexible and aggressive response from Swinburne University management.
Swinburne University has insisted on repayment plans many cannot afford and has since sent emails threatening to call in debt collectors to recover the payments.
NTEU representatives met with University management over the intimidation of its employees, asking them to withdraw their threats and accept the employees’ repayment plans.
NTEU Swinburne Branch President Julie Kimber said: “The intimidation of casual and part time staff is the latest insult in the broader transformation of the university. To treat their most vulnerable employees in this way is galling.
“Like many large corporations, the university has little regard for those who work so hard to sustain it. We have members who have been underpaid by the university.
“When that happens, the university drags its feet and takes months to investigate and rectify the problems.
“We have been trying to get to the bottom of a widespread underpayment issue at the university. Many casual workers will be owed money. It’s disgraceful behaviour.
“To have your employer threaten you with a debt collector and imply that your credit rating will be affected for a mistake they made is despicable, intimidating and deeply distressing.
“Payroll is done by a third party provider and it is a complete disaster. We have had members who have not been paid for months at a time.
“One of our members, a single mum of two children, was struggling to pay rent, and with Christmas and its associated costs looming, it was incredibly stressful.
“We were eventually able to get that resolved but it’s not good enough. Why should the most vulnerable employees bear the cost of an employer’s failures? It has got to a point where you can’t trust your pay. The system is overly complicated and utterly broken. It is a mess. Yet, senior management does nothing about it.”
One Swinburne University supervisor said: “I find it scandalous that the first course of action is debt collectors.
“This has the potential to cause great harm to our sessional staff, through bad credit ratings, and subsequent rejection of personal and home loans, as well as causing huge distrust with the organisation when the University could have simply contacted them, apologised for overpayment and installed a longer-term payment plan that would not cause harm.”
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