Victorian Premier Ben Carroll has promised business leaders he will delay the commencement of controversial work-from-home legislation by 10 months and provide more time for debate before attempting to pass it ahead of the November 28 State election.
Employers are hoping high-level meetings with Victoria's new-look State Government will this week confirm that it will significantly amend a work-from-home bill to assuage concerns over OHS liabilities, "stacking" and an unrealistic timeframe.
A federal authority's concerns that a dispute resolution specialist will miss out on face-to-face connections by working from home 100% of the time while looking after his child are among reasonable business grounds for refusing his request, the FWC has held.
A council's desire to have a senior planning team member pass on his wisdom in-person provided reasonable business grounds to refuse his request to work at home for all but six days a month, the FWC has found.
The FWC has endorsed AGL's grounds for rejecting a customer service consultant's flexible work request, but nevertheless ordered it to conduct a trial requiring her to attend the office for four hours on just 12 occasions over six months so she can continue to care for her incontinent, dementia-affected mother.
In a significant ruling on applications to work from home, the FWC has agreed with a multinational company's claim that its payroll officer could not devote sufficient attention to "complex" tasks while caring for two children under five.
The Victorian working from home legislation "aims to strike a balance" between making remote work available to more workers and the "operational realities" of businesses, partly by creating a comprehensive "reasonableness" test, Premier Jacinta Allan told State Parliament today.
An employee pressing to solely work from home did not abandon or repudiate her employment by moving interstate against the employer's express wishes, the FWC has found.
The FWC has ordered an employer to allow a mother with two young children – one with special needs – to mostly work from her outer suburban home, rebuffing its call for her to attend its Sydney CBD office two days a week.
