{"id":55103,"date":"2026-07-21T07:32:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T07:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/55103\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T07:32:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T07:32:14","slug":"central-queensland-university-underpaid-staff-by-1-3-million-fair-work-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/55103\/","title":{"rendered":"Central Queensland University underpaid staff by $1.3 million, Fair Work finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Central Queensland University (CQU) has been forced to pay $1.3 million in entitlements to former and current staff.<\/p>\n

Underpayments, which date back to the 2012 enterprise agreement, were reported by the university to the Fair Work Ombudsman after the discrepancies were discovered in April 2023.<\/p>\n

The figure is equivalent to an average of about $1,250 per staff member.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

CQU says its payroll system had not been configured correctly to deal with some awards. (ABC Tropical North: Liam O’Connell)<\/p>\n

In a statement, the ombudsman said one staff member had been underpaid more than $63,000.<\/p>\n

The university told the ombudsman a poorly set-up payroll system was to blame, and that a heavy reliance on manual processes led to staff errors.<\/p>\n

The National Tertiary Education Union’s Queensland secretary, Michael McNally, said the university should have already invested in its payroll system.<\/p>\n

“Often, the university will sort out problems for the individual staff member when you raise an issue, but getting them to do a systemic review has taken the ombudsman getting involved,” he said.<\/p>\n

The underpayments stretched across the university’s academics, professional staff and vocational trainers.<\/p>\n

CQU has signed an enforceable undertaking with the ombudsman.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/p>\n

Nick Klomp says the university will bear the cost of more frequent audits. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Vice-chancellor Nick Klomp said the university had set up a dedicated “wage integrity” team.<\/p>\n

“We wanted to be really open and saying, ‘You know what? We’ve done the wrong thing,'” Professor Klomp said.<\/p>\n

He also blamed some underpayments on “complicated awards” and some supervisors’ lack of awareness of entitlements.<\/p>\n

“We’ll continue reporting to [the ombudsman] but our systems and training will really ensure this is very, very unlikely to happen again,” he said.<\/p>\n

The ombudsman said 875 former and current employees had already had their wages returned by CQU, with another 163 waiting.<\/p>\n

The union said $311 million had been recovered nationwide through enforceable undertakings or fines by the ombudsman since it began cracking down on wage underpayments in 2022.<\/p>\n

Universities across Queensland<\/a>, New South Wales<\/a>, Tasmania<\/a> and the Northern Territory<\/a> are among the 13 to sign enforceable undertakings with the ombudsman.<\/p>\n

The University of Queensland repaid more than $7.8 million to more than 10,000 casual staff<\/a> for underpayments spanning seven years.<\/p>\n

\"central<\/p>\n

The National Tertiary Education Union acknowledged the underpayments were lower overall, compared to other Australian universities. (ABC Tropical North: Liam O’Connell)<\/p>\n

Mr McNally acknowledged the CQU figure was “at the lower end of the scale”.<\/p>\n

“It’s symptomatic of the way universities treat their staff,” he said.<\/p>\n

“They really should have ensured that they had the systems in place and that people were paid every dollar that they’re owed.”<\/p>\n

As part of the enforceable undertaking, CQU will be required to make a “contrition payment” of $30,000 with a future payment of up to $100,000, which the ombudsman will distribute to its approved recipient organisations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Central Queensland University (CQU) has been forced to pay $1.3 million in entitlements to former and current staff.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,51741,51742,25220,6272,7740,51743,31756,28236,30818],"class_list":["post-55103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-central-queensland-university","tag-charles-sturt-university","tag-fair-work-ombudsman","tag-griffith-university","tag-national-tertiary-education-union","tag-nick-klomp","tag-underpayment","tag-university-of-tasmania","tag-university-of-wollongong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55103","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=55103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}