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.
In a default judgment, a federal court has ordered the UAE consulate to pay an Australian worker almost $205,000 in penalties, compensation, interest and costs for s-x discrimination and adverse action, after her employer forced her to br-astfeed in a storeroom, store her milk in a suitcase filled with ice, and denied her unpaid parental leave, before dismissing her.
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.
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.
Victoria's Allan Government is supporting a Silver Review recommendation that public sector agencies ensure employees adhere to the expectation that they work a minimum of three days in the office, with most currently attending for only two days.
The FWC's approach to assessing flexible work disputes is potentially undermining workers' rights to plan ahead, an academic has warned, after the tribunal held that a Sydney Water employee could not make such a request in the lead-up to his 55th birthday, and found a father ineligible until he finalised his custody arrangement.
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 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.
A model working from home clause in a key award should avoid contributing to remote workers working "long and unsociable hours", address employer provision of equipment and apply to all employees, according to a Centre for Future Work report.
The "labour productivity bubble" that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic can provide lessons for the future, and hybrid working can be more beneficial to productivity than wholly working from home or the workplace, according to a new Productivity Commission report.
