Working from home clauses spread across public sector pay deals

New deals containing generous ‘working from home’ rights are set to be voted up in some of the biggest government departments.

Generous flexibility clauses are set to apply to 85,000 government employees.

New pay deals containing generous “working from home” rights for federal public sector workers are set to be voted up in some of the biggest government departments next week, extending the new flexibility clauses to 85,000 government employees.

The expected endorsement of deals by employees in the Australian Taxation Office, Services Australia and the Department of Home Affair will mean more than half the public sector’s 170,000-strong workforce will gain the new rights that include no formal cap on the number of working from home days each week and a “bias towards approving requests”.

In the highest “yes” vote for 15 years, 97 per cent of voting Department of Defence employees recently endorsed their deal that also includes significant improvements to paid parental leave, including 18 weeks for the primary carer and the secondary carer.

Under the “working from home” clause, which the federal government and the Community Public Sector Union (CPSU) expect to apply across 103 agreements, agency caps that in practice have limited the right to work from home to two or three days a week are scrapped.

Agencies are required to consider written requests for working from home on a case-by-case basis, with a “bias towards approving requests”.

An agency head can refuse a request on “reasonable business grounds”, including that it would be too costly, would have a significant negative impact on customer service, or that it would likely ­result in a significant loss in ­efficiency or productivity.

An employee who has their ­request rejected has the right to appeal to the Fair Work ­Commission.

CPSU national secretary Melissa Donnelly said the flexible work rights negotiated by the union for APS employees were significant.

National Australia Bank chief executive Ross McEwan said the bank had an expectation staff would come in three days a week. Senior management were expected to attend five days a week.

“You are the leaders and you carry the culture, you train, you develop, you lead the organisation, it’s five days,” he said. “It was the right thing to do for our organisation because we needed to get trained and developed so that we could look after our customers.”

The NAB boss said staff working from home would struggle “ever getting known”.

“So when you’re looking at a screen, after Covid, and you’ve got 50 on the screen and 50 are in front of you, tell me which of the 50 are going to get on?” he said.

As part of its review of awards, the Fair Work Commission has asked employers and unions whether any specific award changes were needed regarding working from home arrangements, a move first reported By The Australian on January 29.

Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke cited the example of rostering provisions in an award acting as a barrier to an employer and employee being able to reach agreement on working from home arrangements.

“What the commission is ­looking through is to see whether or not there are, in fact, those sorts of barriers, some rules, that prevent people from being able to do some of their work at home.

“And if that’s the case, then that would get in the way of where you’ve got mutual benefit, common interests between employees and employers,” he said.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said the commission reviews risked “regulatory overreach”.