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.
In rare flexibility orders won by an ANMF organiser who moved 500km from the office after experiencing domestic violence, the FWC has temporarily blocked the union from requiring her to work more than three nights per fortnight away from home and directed it to count travel time as work time between certain hours for the first half of the school year.
The FWC has backed a school's refusal to let a coordinator perform her executive role part-time for the first two terms when she returns from parental leave, supporting its offer of a lower-paying teacher position and noting it is not simply "serving customers who are buying widgets".
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.
A FWC presidential member has underlined that workers are not immune from retrenchment while on leave or working under flexible arrangements, confirming that operational issues warranting severance can arise at any time.
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.
A leading IR barrister says few employers are equipped to deal with the "huge sleeper issue" posed by the rise of working from home, as it becomes increasingly difficult to order employees to return, but he does not believe more legislation is the answer.
The Federal Government should consider "a right of access" to workplaces rather than a right of entry", to overcome the presumption that workers attend a physical location to perform their jobs that "ignore[s] the reality" of post-COVID-19 remote and digital work environments, a union leader suggests in a paper she will present at the Australian Labour Law Association conference next week in Geelong.
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.
NSW public school teachers have voted up a three-year agreement that builds on a "breakthrough" deal last year that lifted wages by 4% in addition to big one-off rises for those at the top and bottom of pay scales.
