The FWC has backed an ASX-listed early education provider's decision to reject a worker's request for flexible arrangements to enable her to keep picking up her children from school each day, instead of moving to a less-accommodating rotating roster.
The FWC's approach to assessing flexible work disputes is potentially undermining workers' rights to plan ahead, an academic has warned, after the tribunal held that a Sydney Water employee could not make such a request in the lead-up to his 55th birthday, and found a father ineligible until he finalised his custody arrangement.
As a leading employer-clientele lawyer hosed down fears about WFH "chaos" in the wake of the recent Chandler decision, the Greens have introduced legislation giving employees the right to work remotely for at least two days a week unless fulfilling their roles is "impractical or impossible".
The FSU says employers are now on notice that they must have genuine business grounds for refusing flexible work arrangements, after the FWC made orders to enable a Westpac employee to work from home to care for her children, finding "no question" her role can be "performed completely remotely".
The FWC has found a flexible working request invalid, because of its "tenuous" connection to the worker's caring responsibilities and the strain his absence would have imposed on other workers.
A FWC full bench has rejected an employer's challenge to a finding that it must grant an employee's flexible work request, upholding a decision that reaffirms the precedence of NES provisions even when inconsistent with the terms of an enterprise agreement.
The FWC has refused to reduce a worker's redundancy payout because the role the employer offered, after outsourcing the company's HR functions, would have paid less and required her to work in the office an additional day each week, despite the informality of her WFH arrangement.
A worker failed to provide evidence that demonstrated that she sought a compressed work week to care for her partner and grandson, and that those needs related to her age, the FWC has found, ruling her flexible work arrangement request invalid.
The FWC has found the ATO failed to respect the ASU's role as the representative of a legally blind worker called into a meeting to discuss a request the union made on his behalf for a 100% WFH flexibility arrangement, to avoid the need to take public transport.
A model working from home clause in a key award should avoid contributing to remote workers working "long and unsociable hours", address employer provision of equipment and apply to all employees, according to a Centre for Future Work report.
