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.
Electors perceived as "Trump-like" the Dutton Opposition's plans to axe 40,000 public sector jobs and scrap work from home for federal public servants, with the WFH policy fuelling views that the Liberals were "unsympathetic to the needs of women", according to a damning review of the Liberal Party's 2025 federal election campaign.
Working from home arrangements have been a big success in the Australian Public Service, with a mere handful of disputes about flexible work requests, the CPSU has told a Senate inquiry into a bill aimed at enshrining WFH rights.
Employers should be required to consider compensating or giving additional leave to workers who are unable to work from home, to offset savings remote workers make on commuting costs, a police union has told the inquiry into the Greens' WFH Bill.
The FWC has upbraided an early learning facility for seeking to override a part-time employee's right to predictable hours that the employer found "commercially or operationally inconvenient".
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 has found that an employer had no reasonable option other than to dismiss a worker who persistently refused to comply with its hybrid working policy, based on his belief that his employment contract provided an "unconditional" right to work from home.
The FWC has wiped-out the redundancy entitlements of two visa workers who shunned an alternative role that would have enabled them to keep working from their shared apartment.
Casual employment has resumed a long-term decline, while the incidence of working from home has stabilised at just over a third of the workforce, according to newly-released ABS data.
An employer has cleared the first hurdle in challenging a finding that an employee who tripped over a self-erected puppy fence while working from home is entitled to compensation, with a full bench majority remitting the matter for redetermination.
