University staff say they have been punished for speaking out about underpayment and wage theft.

Academics and teachers have testified before a Senate inquiry into underpayment and casualisation in Australian workplaces.

National assistant secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union, Gabe Gooding, said underpayment is “embedded in the business model of Australian universities”.

“Close to 40 per cent of public universities” have been “implicated in underpayments or known to be undertaking audits”, she said. 

Staff at some private education providers have even been asked to get an Australian Business Number (ABN) and operate as sole traders, so unis can avoid making superannuation contributions,, the union figure said.

A survey of casual staff at the University of Sydney last year found 84 per cent had done some kind of unpaid work over the previous six weeks; “working close to one day (6.6 hours) unpaid every week”.

Dr Ellyse Fenton from the University of Queensland said speaking up about underpayment had seen her hours cut.

“I have definitely stopped receiving work at the department I worked at, where I had worked for 13 years, after I appeared in national news media last year,” she said. 

“It is impossible to know if that was the cause of the loss of work ... as a causal [you can be] asked not to come back. I can’t know for sure.

“What I do know, is that when that story came out in August last year. I was not doing the teaching work … but I was employed to supervise an honours student. A few weeks after that story came out, I was removed from all the internal communications, the email lists.”

Dr Yaegan Doran from the University of Sydney said he had seen hours cut when staff spoke up about underpayment too.

“I have a lot of colleagues who very suddenly had less work than they did, for many, many years, after becoming a bit more well known after speaking out,” he told the inquiry.

Dr Doran said he had a colleague who was preparing to speak before the inquiry, but withdrew.

“They are an international student who is also a casual,” he said. 

“Their tutorial hours were reclassified as administration hours a couple of years ago, which leads to a third of pay, depending on the classification. They were suddenly given no work whatsoever.

“When asked if they would want to speak today, they weren’t going to risk it whatsoever. This is unfortunately super common.”

The University of New South Wales said that the “relative complexity” of its employment deals mean there is a “risk of underpayments that may inadvertently occur”.

However, many have spoken against what they say is systemic, not accidental, underpayment.