Each time a story emerges of a large institution underpaying its workforce, one of the first questions, unspoken or not, is how this could have gone unnoticed.
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In the case of the Australian National University, underpayments to casual staff went on for more than 11 years before they came to light last year.
So the question on everyone's minds must surely be, how did no one pick up on this after so much time?
The answer, at least from the perspective of the staff affected, is that such is the lot of the casual worker.
It is, by definition, a precarious employment position made even more so by the current economic climate.
Querying underpayment, or any aspect of remuneration is often too fraught to risk losing the job altogether.
For its part, the ANU has blamed a systems error that deleted timesheets within a short period of time.
It is now working fast to fix the issue and compensate affected staff, and it's worth noting it has self-reported to the Fair Work Ombudsman.
But the National Tertiary Education Union pointed out Australian university staff across the board have now suffered more than $205 million in wage theft.
And it's all because of an increasingly casualised workforce, a cost-saving measure that ultimately seems to cost more in the long term thanks to complex payment structures and a deficit of entrenched workplace stability and experience.
In other words, it may cost less financially to reduce your full-time payroll, but large institutions will ultimately lose out if the workforce is inherently unstable.
The so-called gig economy has long been a reality for today's younger workforce. Indeed, many prefer the entrenched freedom and ability to change jobs at short notice.
![National Tertiary Education Union members rally at the Australian National University. Picture by Sitthixay Ditthavong National Tertiary Education Union members rally at the Australian National University. Picture by Sitthixay Ditthavong](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/9gmjQxX8MpSQh6J68NHMnY/0f39eaca-0e68-417e-a642-8f80cd0040a3.jpg/r0_416_5500_3508_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The era of long-term, single-job careers is a thing of the past.
But large employers - universities, corporations, the hospitality industry at large - have taken advantage of this for too long, and problems such as the latest to arise at ANU have become entrenched.
Oversights in large, complex payment systems are inevitable, but they shouldn't be.
The ANU has certainly highlighted the error and apologised to staff, as well it should, but as the National Tertiary Education Union's ACT division secretary Dr Lachlan Clohesy points out, this latest example of wage theft, inadvertent or otherwise, is indicative of a far larger problem.
"Wage theft is a symptom of what is not well in Australia's universities, but the underlying disease is insecure work," he said.
"When workers are employed insecurely, they are less likely to report workplace issues, which is why this can go undetected for so long.
"This is a governance issue which must be addressed by the Australian Universities Accord process."
If casual workers feel unable to speak out about underpayment at a prestigious university, one can only imagine the legions of workers in smaller, less revered organisations who feel unable to address remuneration shortfalls.
The ANU's error is, at best, an oversight, and at worst, out-and-out wage theft.
Regardless, as a large prestigious university, it should be setting an example for the education and corporate sector.
After 11 years, it's really the least it can do.
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