Working from home may mean real trouble for struggling unions

Demands that people commute just to keep office tower landlords happy and CBDs vibrant seem unreasonable.

Within the Labor Party, unions in industries that cannot embrace work from home will become more powerful.

Just as the autumn leaves start to fall, hopes also are fading that life will return to normal this year. Expectations have to be adjusted downwards once again.

Whoever is to blame — and it beggars belief that Scott Morrison wants to draw attention to the failings by engaging in belligerent argument — our vaccination rollout is as slow as a wet week.

Even if our program had lived up to the optimistic series of announcements, the virus keeps mutating and no one knows how long our current vaccines will work for anyway.

No one feels too safe any more and any certainty we had about anything is simply not there. The idea is forming that it is probably only a matter of time before we are hit again with something new. So whatever their conveniences, high-density environments are not so attractive now. What is highly prized is fresh air, access to nature, space and distance from each other.

Work from home has been mainstreamed and is here to stay in some form or other. Demands that people commute to the office just to keep office tower landlords happy and CBDs vibrant seem quite unreasonable. As workers move from the CBDs to the outer suburbs and regions, so must the restaurants, coffee shops and retail hubs.

In line with changing work trends, profound social change is occurring, too. Governments of all persuasions need to adapt and respond, but the reality of working from home spells real trouble for some unions.

In November last year the ACTU released the results of an online survey that collated the views of more than 10,000 workers. Eighty-one per cent said they wanted to work from home permanently, provided employer support was appropriate.

The support that employers should provide, in the view of the ACTU, is quite comprehensive.

A Working from Home Charter with a long list of demands now has been released. The charter demands that work from home should occur only after consultation and agreement between employers and unions, and should be reflected in legally binding agreements. Arrangements must be offered to all workers but should be voluntary for the individual worker to accept or reject.

At the same time, “The employer will not downgrade the quality of working life on the employer’s premises simply because some employees are working from home.”

Workers will “still be able to come to the premises, perform their duties, access amenities, and interact with other employees in a similar way to how these occurred before home working commenced”.

Home workers must be treated equally, in all ways, to those in the office. The employer must “ensure that appropriate equipment, systems, and technology to support remote working are properly installed, are functioning and maintained”, and must meet the insurance costs.

An “adequate allowance or full cost reimbursement for all work-related expenses including water, electricity and gas, stationery, equipment, amenities, telephone and internet expenses” must be paid. All working hours must be recorded, and if any productivity gains are achieved they “should be shared with the workforce through collective bargaining”.

Workers “must have access to, and influence over, data collected on them, and health and safety measures must be addressed.

Home workers must have a risk assessment and proper ergonomics, and must be protected from risks “to their mental health including stress and/or depression”, “any increased potential for online bullying and domestic violence”.

Employers must “encourage and facilitate” access to the union and provide delegates with paid time off to attend to union matters, and any disputes must be settled with a process that includes arbitration, meaning that the dispute mediator can decide the outcome. The charter also says employees cannot reasonably be expected to be contactable, and responding to phone calls and emails, at all hours.

Work from home does present a huge problem for union revenue in terms of “right of entry” and access to working people. Officials hold permits that allow them the right to enter employer premises to conduct discussions during non-working time with employees eligible to be their members.

When the workplace is someone’s home, though, this changes everything. The law is silent on the issue and it is difficult to envisage a union official knocking on someone’s front door, flipping their permit in their face and demanding entry to hold discussions. For this reason the charter demands the employer facilitate access to workers via technology the employer provides.

Some unions will find it impossible to organise and recruit members in businesses where workers are spread across the country, indeed across the globe, working from their home offices.

These unions are likely to suffer significant decline in fee-paying membership and no doubt will be seeking other forms of revenue to keep them afloat.

Within the Labor Party, unions in industries that cannot embrace work from home will become more powerful.