Weeks into the semester, as universities around Australia closed due to the pandemic, a group of precarious workers from Monash University met to form the Monash Casuals Network (MCN). Made up of casual academic and professional staff, the MCN responds to the challenges of organizing precariously employed workers and attempts to build better representation for them within the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU).

At the beginning of the pandemic, the university laid off thousands of fixed-term and casual staff. This meant that remaining staff faced increasing pressure to work more for less pay. The MCN provided a forum for casuals — like us — from across the university to report on industrial issues. By discussing the conditions we faced together, we understood how widespread wage theft is within higher education.

Eighteen months later, we fought our first battle, between the MCN and Monash University, over wage theft — and the MCN won. On September 23 this year, Monash University confessed to underpaying educators to the tune of $8.6 million.