The Australian Council of Trade Unions is pushing to expand workers’ rights to challenge employers who refuse staff requests to work from home and raise the threshold for bosses to reject such requests, in what could shape up as a key policy battle for the next election.

The push comes as major companies, including Coles, Amazon, and Tabcorp, have tightened work-from-home rules in recent months to require thousands of office workers to attend the workplace for at least three and up to five days a week.