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The University of Wollongong has come in No.2 in the nation on the rankings nobody wants to win - the institutions which accumulated the most unpaid staff wages and entitlements.
Findings from a new National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) report show the results of 55 instances of "wage theft" the union had analysed from 2009, with most occurring since 2014 - affecting more than 97,000 individual employees.
UOW came in second place, with $18 million owed to staff over two reported instances, including one in July this year when UOW self-reported to the Fair Work Ombudsman it had underpaid 6000 casual workers a total of $8 million.
UOW had also come clean in 2017 about $10 million in superannuation which had not been paid because of what the university called "longstanding anomalies" in the payroll system.
The total amounts used for the new NTEU report do not reflect present-day debts but are totals of unpaid moneys accumulated since 2009 - more than $160 million across the Australian tertiary sector.
But an NTEU committee member at UOW, Jonathon Mackay, said there would still be large amounts of underpayment that had not yet been discovered.
He said the underpayment declared this year at UOW mainly concerned casual non-teaching staff - and once academic staff were included more problems could be discovered.
"The way the casual academic staff in the way that their employment is set up doesn't really capture the reality of the work that they're performing," Dr Mackay said.
"They're paid an hourly rate, but they're not actually given specific times - or they're given a really short amount of marking time that doesn't reflect the needs that students will want or expect for feedback.
"So they're often having to go above what is set as a very, very low amount of pay or amount of time for marking ... they need to actually often do more time than they're going to be paid for."
Dr Mackay said the business model of many universities relied on casual staff being exploited.
"If we start peeling away the layers, there will be this theme of exploitation of the staff who are providing these teaching services, most of whom are casual and in precarious positions of employment - many of whom are also suffering quite substantially from the cost of living crisis," he said.
"At the moment, we have plenty of casual academic staff who are below the poverty rate.
"And I think many students and as well as the wider community, many people just aren't aware of the precarious future that academic casual tutors will face.
"The universities, not just including UOW but other universities, rely on these staff members who are incredibly precariously employed, that the only way for them to get a good name and to begin an academic career is through exploiting their own labour."
UOW committed to pay the missing superannuation in 2017 and the unpaid wages declared in July this year.
A UOW spokesman said it had kept staff informed throughout the remediation process for this year's problems, which was ongoing.
"UOW has engaged an external auditor and is undertaking a comprehensive and transparent remediation process that will result in staff members being fully reimbursed," the spokesman said.
"Staff will receive comprehensive support and ongoing communications throughout the remediation process.
"The unrelated superannuation issue referred to dates back to 2017 and involved some underpayment and some overpayment of superannuation.
"All underpayments in this context have been remediated, and staff who received overpayments were not required to repay them."
Top place in the unenviable rankings went to the University of Melbourne, which at $45 million had ran up total debts to staff greater than those of the next three universities combined.
NTEU national president Alison Barnes said the scale of "wage theft" demanded action.
"These shocking figures expose the depths of systemic underpayment in Australian universities," she said.
"Wage theft has a devastating impact on the lives of university staff. It can mean struggling to make ends meet, being unable to afford to pay bills, or being forced to take on additional work.
"Widespread casualisation has led to rampant wage theft. Unaccountable vice-chancellors on million-dollar salaries have been in charge of this crisis with almost no accountability.
"We need urgent action from all governments to reform the governance model for universities and protect workers from exploitation."