- by Peter Farmer
- The Guardian
- Issue #2201
Photo: Dave Morris – flickr.com (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Is working from home something that’s just going to happen anyway, or does it need legislation? Do workers need protections from employers even if they have the right to work at home? It’s a hot topic.
One of the many things that sank Peter Dutton’s hopes of becoming PM in the last federal election was the announcement that he would force public servants to work in the office even if they didn’t really need to.
Dutton was hoping to get the votes of people who can’t work from home, but wound up getting a backlash from women around the country who are the biggest beneficiaries of WFH.
One of the last acts of Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan before she was replaced by Ben Caroll was to legislate to protect Work From Home rights. For those who already have no problem working at home for some or all of the working week, this might have seemed an unnecessary bid for popularity.
One group who took it seriously was Victoria’s business lobby, who wasted no time getting their demand for the legislation to be wound back on the front page of Melbourne’s Age newspaper. Do businesses just dislike the idea, or is there more at stake?
An industrial lawyer who looked at the actual legislation identified a few issues that show the WFH laws are not just a feel-good thing.
A positive feature of the legislation is that it extends the scope of injuries employers can be liable for. Put simply, when the employer makes you send in pictures of your home office, that has to be more than a box-ticking exercise for them.
The legislation also means that the employer has to pay “reasonable costs” for equipment and adjustments made to the home. This hasn’t been tested in court yet, and ‘reasonable’ is the least favourite word of a lot of lawyers, but it most likely means that if you have to shell out for something solely because your boss wants you to, that’s on them.
On the down side, the legislation limits the right to work from home to a select group of employees. Employees on probation, apprentices, workers in the gig economy, casual workers and vaguely “workers of a proscribed class” are all excluded.
Although employers are whinging about it, the legislation defines a specified period for work-from-home as 2 days for workers doing a full 38 hour week. This can’t be increased without negotiation with an employer.
‘Reasonable’ is the weasel word here, because it’s so vague. The lawyer we consulted thinks that since employers almost always have more power than workers, they can decide what ‘reasonable’ means without having to consult.
Overall the legislation is worth keeping, although it could be stronger. As usual with industrial legislation, the positive provisions will have to be fought for by unions.
No matter how much or how little working from home you do, join your union!
