Employers should consider broadening the definition of "family" in flexible work policies to reflect Indigenous kinship networks, according to the Centre for Indigenous People and Work, while unions are calling for a similar change to the NES leave entitlements, along with a new cultural leave entitlement.
UK employers might have to pay workers up to eight weeks compensation if they unreasonably refuse a flexible work request, under changes proposed by the Starmer Government.
The need for legislation to enshrine two days a week of working from home for all employees is "not clear", as many employers and workers have now found a hybrid "sweet spot" without any government intervention, according to the Productivity Commission.
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.
A FWC member has revealed the untold story of what happened to the vast majority of the almost 300 disputes over flexible work requests the tribunal received in the last financial year, after only a handful went to arbitration, while she also spelt out her proven template for resolution.
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.
A leading employment and IR barrister says the four-day working week, working from home and the right to disconnect are part of an unavoidable reorganisation of working hours that is set to become "the big issue of our time".
