Just 6% of clerical workers who seek WFH arrangements are knocked back by their employer, according to a new Swinburne University study commissioned by the FWC as part of the work from home test case.
A retrenched educator who rejected an alternative role because she wanted to keep working from home at least a day a week has lost her severance entitlements, after the FWC found she did not have a formal right to maintain her flexible arrangements.
The FWC has held that it has no power under the Fair Work Act's flexible work dispute provisions to deal with a National Australia Bank worker's challenge to the cancellation of her WFH flexibility arrangement after she allegedly failed to comply with its terms.
The FWC has upheld a worker's flexible work request after his employer ended an informal 13-year arrangement, in a decision reaffirming the precedence of the NES, even when it is inconsistent with the terms of an enterprise agreement.
The FWC has overruled an employer's resistance to a working parent's request to work an extra day a fortnight at home to care for his toddler daughter until she reaches two years of age, while rejecting its claims that it would set a precedent for the remainder of its workforce.
A FWC full bench has decided to park its consideration of whether to bring forward the trigger for consultations in model agreement clauses after employers expressed "alarm" at the prospect of requiring it when proposing to introduce a major change rather than when they make a "definite decision".
The FWC has become overly focussed on verifying workers' eligibility for flexible work requests by imposing onerous evidentiary requirements on them, which has limited the effectiveness of its new dispute power, a researcher has told the review panel in her response to its Secure Jobs, Better Pay draft report.
The ACTU has told a review of the SJBP Act that employers should be compelled to accommodate flexible work requests - such as working from home - unless it causes "unjustifiable hardship", while unions should not have to demonstrate majority employee support for contested single-interest bargaining authorisations.
JobKeeper-like wage subsidies should be part of a government's "toolkit" for future pandemics, but "blanket" early access to superannuation should be taken off the table, according to the independent inquiry into Australia's response to COVID-19.
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.
