$9k a year: Former uni lecturer short-changes student employee

A dream opportunity for a master’s student to be employed in her field straight out of university has turned into a nightmare after she was paid just $9000 for a full year’s worth of work.

Now, the former student has won a tribunal order for her former manager and mentor to pay her $30,000 to make up most of the wages she was short-changed on.

The ruling, issued by the Disputes Tribunal last week, doesn’t name the parties or the university involved but details how the student had been employed by a university as a part-time researcher before submitting her master’s thesis in February 2022.

Her manager in that role left the university and set up her own organisation in which she offered the student a full-time position.

It was a role she was "honoured" to be offered, working alongside a well-respected professional in a field she wanted to pursue.

The woman was engaged as a subcontractor rather than an employee in March 2022 and chose her own hours of work and days off and primarily worked from home.

However, she didn’t issue a $2600 invoice for her work until July that same year, with the tribunal noting that her boss kept promising she would eventually be paid.

The former student said she had every reason to trust her boss because of her widely respected position in a field they both had an interest in.

Despite those promises that she would be paid, the former student received a total of $9000, with a further $41,000 worth of invoices remaining unpaid.

The Disputes Tribunal however has a maximum compensation cap of $30,000, meaning the student had to abandon making a claim against the full amount so she could fall within the jurisdiction of the tribunal.

The student said that at this stage she desired to make that compromise rather than have the claim determined for a larger amount in the District Court so she could settle and for the matter to remain confidential.

At a hearing earlier this year, Christchurch-based tribunal referee Krysia Cowie attempted to call the woman’s boss only to be hung up on. Further calls went unanswered and the hearing was conducted without her.

In her ruling Cowie first established that the former student was legally an employee and was engaged to work full-time at a rate of $33 an hour, with initial invoices being paid but subsequent ones going ignored.

The student provided emails from her boss acknowledging she was behind in payments and was expecting to receive $100,000 and would make up the balance when she could.

Cowie ultimately found that the woman was owed the tribunal’s maximum amount it could order of $30,000 as well as interest on that amount totalling $1400.

"I am satisfied that [the lecturer] has not provided a sufficient reason for not paying [the student] on the terms that she agreed to and as a result [the student] has suffered hardship," Cowie said.

 - Jeremy Wilkinson, Open Justice reporter