SUPER ERROR AT UNIVERSITY

A STUFF-UP at James Cook University has seen more than 2000 former and current staff underpaid their superannuation for more than a decade.

The university had made a “mistake” in interpreting the fine print on rules outlined by the Australian Taxation Office and enterprise agreements. An email to the entire faculty on January 29, obtained by the Bulletin, explained that forensic accountants had gone through 852,000 payments made since 2009.

A STUFF-UP at James Cook University has seen more than 2000 former and current staff underpaid their superannuation for more than a decade.

The Bulletin can reveal that JCU – which has campuses in Townsville, Cairns, Mount Isa and the Torres Strait – had made a “mistake” in interpreting the fine print on rules outlined by the Australian Taxation Office and enterprise agreements.

An email to the university’s entire faculty from Vice Chancellor Sandra Harding on January 29, obtained by the Bulletin, explains that external forensic accountants had looked through 852,000 payments made since 2009. It came after JCU decided to look into its own payments in light of other universities finding they had made errors, the email says.

A day later, staff received letters, including one seen by the Bulletin, informing them how much they were individually owed.

It’s understood JCU has applied 10 per cent interest on the underpayments to make up for the growth the money would have accrued while sitting in super funds over the years.

The mess-up has cost the university more than $1 million.

A spokesman for JCU said the university had made a mistake in underpaying superannuation of 570 current and 1559 former staff members but the error was not malicious, and it was during a self-initiated compliance review completed last month when the issue surfaced.

In the email to the university’s faculty, Ms Harding apologised for the errors.

“(They) were the result of a mistaken, but good faith application of the relevant ATO rulings, enterprise agreements g and superannuation trust deeds,” she said. “We have now corrected the system issues that led to the incorrect superannuation payments being made and have taken steps to remedy edy any underpayments. underpayments.”

The Queensland branch of the National Tertiary Education Union said while the error wasn’t as significant as wage theft, it was still a “pretty big accident”.

“It’s still a pretty serious cock-up in anyone’s language,” division secretary Michael Mcnally said.

He also said the 10 per cent interest wouldn’t really cover what people had missed out on.

But he said overall, JCU had acted proactively and reasonably to fix the stuff-up.

The NTEU said they knew of one other Queensland university at this stage which was undertaking a compliance review of superannuation payments.