Interested parties have until 4pm next Monday to comment on draft employer and employee surveys commissioned as a key component of the FWC's bid to develop an award clause removing impediments to working from home.
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.
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.
