In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, Pan Karanikolas has opened up about the issues of job insecurity and wage theft currently facing Australian universities.
According to the SMH, the sector has already repaid thousands of current and former staff about $100 million. Central to this wage theft is the amount of time casual staff have to mark assessments and prepare courses.
In Karanikolas’ case, they is currently at La Trobe University in the department of social inquiry, but they has worked on short-term casual contracts since 2016 across several universities as a tutor, research assistant and developing courses.
They said the wage theft has been most apparent when marking work or when students want feedback.
“Someone is getting short-changed. It’s going to be either you or the student,” they said.
A spokeswoman for La Trobe told the SMH its “unintentional underpayments” of staff, which have now reached $8.1 million, were due to outdated systems.
The spokesperson said this has since been addressed “to avoid any future errors.”
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
