The Albanese Government's first major tranche of IR legislation beefs-up workers' rights to secure flexible working arrangements and empowers the FWC to arbitrate if conciliation of a refused request fails.
The Senate Work and Care inquiry's Labor and Greens majority is urging the Albanese Government to move swiftly to consider a right to disconnect, make flexibility requests an enforceable right and provide "roster justice" by ensuring workers with variable hours have predictability and certainty, in a 152-page interim report tabled this afternoon.
In a detailed examination of a major government department's early response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Court has rejected union claims that a hastily-conceived working from home policy breached existing arrangements and consultation requirements.
The ANMF has told the Senate work and care inquiry that ordinary full-time hours should be reduced from 38 hours to 32 to enable workers to achieve a better balance of work and caring responsibilities.
Many workers would forgo a pay rise of up to 10% to secure more say in where and when they work, according to a study that says the Fair Work Act is failing to keep up with flexible practices, while other research says WFH employees save an average of $10,000 a year.
The FWC has observed that a Victorian worker's application to work full-time from home under flexible work arrangements was largely motivated by her opposition to COVID-19 vaccinations, in upholding her employer's refusal of her request.
A university supervisor's rejection of an academic's five-year work-from-home application and his repeated "advice" about how to use students' work to reach research targets did not constitute bullying, the FWC has held.
The FWC has taken the National Audit Office to task for revoking permission for a veteran public servant "at increased risk" from COVID-19 to work from home and then sacking her after she refused to return to Canberra while she cared for her dying uncle at their second residence.
People managers in organisations making this year's Workplace Gender Equality Agency employer of choice list have for the first time had to train-up on flexible working arrangements and how to deal with resistance to gender equality objectives.
Victoria's Andrews Labor Government will later this week remove its longstanding COVID-19 public health recommendation to work from home if possible, after a big drop in virus-related hospitalisations and a substantial rise in vaccination third-doses.
