Working from home the ‘new frontier’ in employee rights

Regarding working from home, Riordan said, “we need to consider common conditions and their impact on an agency’s operational requirements. Agencies have service delivery obligations on behalf of the Australian community and not all types of flexibility is suitable for all roles.”

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The National Tertiary Education Union is negotiating with universities across Australia to lock in work-from-home rights, after having secured the condition at Western Sydney University, while the Finance Sector Union is trying to hammer down similar conditions with banks.

In a campaign launched over summer, the ACTU raised soaring living costs as a reason to keep working from home as white-collar unions push to bake the right into their next pay deals, while employers are warning against “mandating” such arrangements.

Australian Industry Group head Innes Willox said many employers continued to offer employees flexible work arrangements, including working from home. “We mustn’t, however, return to the ‘one size fits all’ approach of mandating such arrangements,” Willox said.

Gender affirmation leave is a workplace condition now offered to employees at ANZ, Suncorp, and ABC and SBS, and which the Commonwealth public service is also now pursuing.

Donnelly said the 30 days paid leave would help transitioning employees by allowing them the time off for necessary appointments, procedures and other supports. Riordan said this claim would be given genuine consideration.

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Australia’s Chief Health Officer Professor Paul Kelly told a parliamentary forum last month he’d asked a subcommittee of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee to make indoor air quality a key priority for the next 12 months.

The latest federal government COVID-19 data shows nearly 4000 cases a day.

The federal government in September ended pandemic leave disaster payments that helped casuals and other workers without leave entitlements receive income while sick with COVID-19.

But ACTU secretary Sally McManus said employers still had a health and safety obligation to their workers who couldn’t rely on banked sick leave, adding it was a public health “control measure”.

“It’s a way of ensuring that people don’t come to work,” McManus said. “COVID isn’t the flu and there’s all the issues around long COVID, and so, for that reason, it’s a health and safety obligation.”

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