'Working at the level above: university promotion policies as a tool for wage theft and underpayment' by Troy Heffernan and Kathleen Smithers in (2024) Higher Education Research and Development comments
Higher education has a strong relationship with wage theft, which has been examined throughout years of research, reports, and government enquiries. This paper examines the practices of wage theft that often surround academic promotions, and specifically, the common requirement that someone must already be working at the level for which they are hoping to be promoted. The work uses Australia’s higher education sector as an example, as Australia’s employment and promotion conditions are similar in many aspects to other higher education sectors. The paper provides an analysis of the promotion expectations to which academics are subjected to understand what tasks academics are expected to complete, and for how long, without being paid, before they can apply for promotion. The paper demonstrates to academics, policymakers, and unions, yet another exploitative practice that must be monitored and removed from the modern university as the sector looks to engage more equitable practices.
Wage theft and employee underpayment have a close and entangled relationship with higher education. Mainstream media articles such as ‘Wage theft is core university business’ and ‘Wage theft: Our universities’ dirty little secret’ (Cahill, 2020, 2021) identify how the problem of university wage theft and underpayment is so widespread that its notoriety reaches beyond academic research and interest (Heffernan, 2022). Although sometimes used interchangeably, wage theft is much more than just underpayment of staff. Wage theft includes underpayment, failure to pay superannuation, not paying for training or trial periods, not paying appropriately for higher duties, deliberate employee misclassification and more (Australian Council of Trade Unions, 2020; Australian Unions, n.d.) Exploitation and underpayment have become such a problem in some sectors that government reports are highlighting the issue as these sectors attempt to right some of the wrongs from their past (Australian Federal Government, 2024). Much of the wage theft and exploitation that has previously been investigated and written about relates to underpayments of casual staff including system errors, mistakes, unfair work practices, and a sector generally not concerned with how its workers are treated. Many of these issues remain buried and hidden, only surfacing years later when enough people begin collectively asking why they were not paid for work they had completed (Richards, 2021). This paper, however, examines a more explicit form of wage theft – one written into publicly accessible policy documents.
This paper explores what is required to gain promotion in the modern university. The work analyses university promotion policies to demonstrate the practices institutions are using to exploit their academic employees. Australia was selected as the chosen location for analysis as over 85% of the country’s 39 universities have engaged in wage theft (NTEU, 2024). Yet, much of what occurs in the Australian university sector and its policies is reflective of what happens in other global sectors – particularly in the Global North (Smithers et al., 2023). Australia also follows the European model where a permanent or continuing position is usually gained early in one’s career, rather than the North American tenure system where secure employment is gained via a large body of work (Heffernan, 2022). Nonetheless, Australia’s academic hierarchy (Table 1) is broadly reflective of many other sectors, and is easily decipherable in a global occupation such as academia. Thus, though the paper examines Australia’s higher education sector, the paper’s results provide insights to international readers interested in exploitative promotional practices. ...
The topic of examining the requirements to be considered for promotion is also happening at a time when the university as a wider system has undergone more than half a century of rigorous change since the 1960s onwards. Though the massification of the university has occurred at different times in different countries depending on budget, development, and even experiences following the Second World War, higher education in the early-twenty-first century has few resemblances to higher education in the early-twentieth century (Esson & Ertl, 2016). The repercussion of the last few decades is that in most sectors, the university is no longer a community of scholars, governed by scholars, largely for society’s elite. The university is now a business that experiences competition from other institutions, and each must vie for student numbers and funding. Accordingly, the university can no longer think of itself or act as a scholarly institution dedicated to enhancing research, learning, and communities – it may do these things but it must do so in a business-focused environment. For these reasons, the university has very different priorities today than it did only a few decades ago, which does mean that success in this space as an employee is also different today than it once appeared (Jones, 2022).
These changes are evident in part by the different tasks academics of today are expected to complete to climb the academic hierarchy (such as those discussed in this paper), but perhaps the clearest indication of changes we have seen in academic careers is the titles associated with academia such as Lecturer, Reader, Associate Professor and Professor and now more often tied to level of employment, and sometimes in ways that are completely devoid of any academic expertise and knowledge. When people can climb the academic ladder through administrative work with no research profile, or experienced business leaders are being brought into universities and given the title of ‘Professor’ without holding a doctoral qualification, the employment and career landscape has undoubtedly changed (Heffernan, 2024). These changes, however, help us understand why changes in academic career practices, expectations, and progression is happening, but it does not excuse the manipulative promotion practices that have formed in many institutions.
This paper brings to light the exploitative methods that have become standard practice in many universities. When wage theft is broadly defined as completing work for which one is not adequately paid for completing (Hare, 2022), and universities have created a system of promotion that routinely requires staff to be working partially or wholly at a level above their current role, the systematic manipulation and exploitation of academic staff is clear. That universities engage in such practices should also not come as a surprise as academia is an industry often built on gifted labour, and the sector regularly rewards people working harder than required in the hope of faster promotion, grant success, or leadership roles (Heffernan, 2024). However, this paper is not about personal choice or unwritten rules that lead to dubious work expectations; this study investigates the documented and clear practice of universities requiring staff to complete work, for which they will not be paid, if they hope to be considered for promotion. In a sector that is trying to rectify many of its questionable past work practices and inequitable decisions that have come to light through research, inquiries, and reports, that this form of wage theft continues is one practice that must be reassessed by university policymakers, academics, managers, and unions.
