The FWC has upheld the sacking of an aged care home manager found to have signed off on a colleague's "ludicrous" work-from-home arrangement while apparently harbouring hopes that their close relationship would deepen.
FWC president Adam Hatcher will convene a directions hearing next month into the Commission's own-initiative case to develop a "workable" award clause that removes impediments to working from home.
The FWC has found that a worker failed to establish an "objective rational connection" between her age and her flexible working request, after she resisted ANZ's hybrid working policy and asked to work 100% from home because of her fear of catching COVID-19.
The FWC has warned employers against giving "generic and blanket HR answers" when they provide their "reasonable business grounds" for knocking back flexibility requests, before ultimately rejecting a bid from a worker with challenging caring responsibilities to continue working entirely from home.
Victoria Police rejected a crime scene officer's request for a flexible work arrangement on reasonable business grounds, the FWC has held, while urging the parties to embrace a "better than nothing" compromise.
The FWC is inviting submissions by June 11 on a "right to disconnect" audit of all 155 modern awards focusing on terms involving spans of hours, notice, supervisory duties, and requirements to remain on call, on standby or return to duty.
A bank manager has failed to establish that his employer lacked reasonable business grounds for refusing his request to work solely from home to aid his injured yoga instructor partner's recovery as she conducted 15 high-intensity lessons per week.
The FWC has reduced the redundancy entitlements of five former employees of online trading platform Bartercard after they refused new positions requiring them to work exclusively from home and to fork out the full cost of setting up an appropriate space.
The FWC has awarded compensation to an accounts assistant who said she could not return to the office after working from home for almost a decade, while her employer maintained that the arrangement only began with the pandemic.
A worker with inflammatory bowel disease has lost his bid to use the Secure Jobs Act flexible work provisions to resist a request to return to the office 40% of the time, the FWC finding it will boost his employer's ability to lift his productivity and allow others to benefit from his experience.
