{"id":37309,"date":"2026-06-24T03:18:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T03:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/37309\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T03:18:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T03:18:15","slug":"charles-darwin-university-forced-to-make-4-million-payout-after-six-years-of-staff-underpayments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/37309\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Darwin University forced to make $4 million payout after six years of staff underpayments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Darwin University (CDU) has been directed to back pay more than $4 million in wages after it was found to have underpaid more than 800 employees between 2016 and 2022.<\/p>\n

In a statement yesterday, the Australian Fair Work Ombudsman said CDU entered an enforceable undertaking with the workplace regulator, after self-reporting its non-compliance with Fair Work laws in 2022.<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

The issue affects both current and former academic and professional staff. (ABC News: Dane Hirst)<\/p>\n

Both CDU and the Ombudsman said the matter affected current and former casual staff working across professional and academic roles.<\/p>\n

A total of 823 employees from campuses across the Northern Territory were impacted, with a payroll review of 1,423 more employees still underway.<\/p>\n

Of the 612 payments rectified so far, employees have been back-paid an average of $1,700, with some amounting to as much as $242,000 including superannuation and interest.<\/p>\n

In a statement, CDU said it expects all payment calculations to be completed in the second half of the year.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Staff from campuses across the NT are affected by the underpayments. (ABC News: James Elton)<\/p>\n

Under the enforceable undertaking, CDU will be required to commission two independent audits of its payroll system to ensure it is complying with Fair Work laws.<\/p>\n

The university will also be required to maintain an employee complaint and review mechanism.<\/p>\n

National Tertiary Education Union NT secretary Rajeev Sharma said the union welcomed the undertaking, but argued there should have been more urgency in addressing the matter.<\/p>\n

“Why has it taken so long?” he said.<\/p>\n

“I know it’s a resource issue, but this is an important matter and more resources should have been allocated to address this issue sooner rather than later.”<\/p>\n

The undertaking over back pay comes as CDU works to recover from an administrative bungle that left more than 400 TAFE students unaccredited.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Former vice-chancellor Scott Bowman resigned earlier this year on the back of the TAFE accreditation bungle. (ABC News: Pete Garnish)<\/p>\n

The scandal, which came to light early this year, resulted in the resignation of the university’s former vice-chancellor Scott Bowman and TAFE chief executive Michael Hamilton.<\/p>\n

CDU also subsequently abandoned its plans to develop a campus in London, after investing $2 million in the initiative.<\/p>\n

CDU urged to strengthen accountability measures<\/p>\n

Australian Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth commended CDU for working with her office.<\/p>\n

However, she said underpayment of staff was becoming increasingly common in the Australian university sector.<\/p>\n

“In 2020 we began alerting universities to our concerns about payments,” Ms Booth said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Anna Booth says the underpayment of staff at universities has become increasingly common in Australia. (ABC News: Billy Cooper)<\/p>\n

“We’ve been in touch with 42 universities since then and entered into 11 enforceable undertakings.<\/p>\n

“It really is a systemic problem in the university sector.”<\/p>\n

While she did not imply the underpayments were deliberate, she said CDU and other universities had failed to invest in human resources, payroll and time-recording systems.<\/p>\n

“We found trends of poor governance and management oversight,” she said.<\/p>\n

Ms Booth said the lack of central payroll and complaints systems was a key factor in the underpayments taking place at universities across Australia.<\/p>\n

\"CDU<\/p>\n

Some staff are yet to receive back-pay from the error. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

“A decentralised payroll system meant that some time-sheets were not processed to accurately record overtime hours worked and the payroll system was not properly configured to ensure employees received their correct entitlements,” she said.<\/p>\n

Mr Sharma said it was imperative CDU learnt from its mistakes, but noted the most pressing matter facing the university’s employees was ensuring the current batch of back payments was completed.<\/p>\n

“There are still a number of CDU staff and NTEU members who have not received the underpayment that CDU owes to them, so that is a concern,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Darwin University (CDU) has been directed to back pay more than $4 million in wages after it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31277,31278,22,21,31273,31272,31279,27619,25220,31274,31275,31276,25],"class_list":["post-37309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-academic","tag-anna-booth","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-cdu","tag-charles-darwin-university","tag-education-union","tag-fair-work","tag-fair-work-ombudsman","tag-fwo","tag-scott-bowman","tag-university-underpayment","tag-wages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}