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 Australian Industry Group says that its clerks award WFH proposal is "far less drastic than the unions appear to suggest", in its newly-published response to ASU and ACTU concerns that it might conflict with the new penalty rates legislation and the NES.
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.
The FWC might hear the landmark working from home case in early December, after FWC President Adam Hatcher today acceded to an AIG request for a short delay to provide time for submissions on jurisdictional issues unions have raised, related to the National Employment Standards and the recently-passed penalty rates protection legislation.
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 proportion of employees working from home in 2023 has hardly eased since the COVID-19 lockdown, with 35% of workers doing some WFH and 15% performing most of their hours away from the office, according to the latest HILDA report.
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.
