School drop offs fine if you make up the time, says bosses

Employees working from home should be able to stop work for caring duties but not get paid extra for making up time at night, employers propose.

Employees working from home should be able to stop work for school drops off or to prepare dinner but give up extra pay for working late.

Employees working from home should be able to stop work for school drops-off and pick-ups and to perform caring duties but not get penalty rates or overtime when they made up the time by working early in the morning or late at night, employers have proposed.

Responding to a Fair Work Commission review into working-from-home arrangements, major business groups said employers and employees should be able to agree to waive award provisions that ­require ordinary working hours be performed continuously or that prevent ordinary hours being worked beyond certain times.

According to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, employees could start work early before their children have woken, or finish in the evening after they have gone to bed, but not be paid the penalty rate or overtime that might apply under the award for working these hours.

In exchange for working early or late the employee could stop work to undertake caring tasks ­including school drop-offs and pick-ups, sports training, dinner preparation, putting their children to bed or taking an elderly relative to a medical appointment.

The chamber argued that the arrangement, a version of which applied to up to one million award-reliant workers required to stay at home during the pandemic, would be voluntary and subject to employee and employer agreement.

“The point of the proposal is to allow employers and employees to agree on hours that ‘work’ for them and their individual needs,” the chamber’s submission says.

“As a merit point, an employee who is required to work into the evening because they have been required to undertake caring ­responsibilities during the day should not be entitled to penalty payments merely due to the lateness of their work.”

It says “in reality of course”, the prospect of penalty payments ­applying to such an arrangement means that it is unlikely that an employer would agree to or ­endorse such an arrangement.  As commission president Adam Hatcher laid out a timetable to vary awards to include a right to disconnect, the Australian Industry Group joined the ACCI in backing a series of award provisions not ­applying when employees worked from home, including regulation of meal breaks and rest breaks; minimum engagement clauses and ­allowances for attending a designated workplace.

The Ai Group submission says working from home provisions are not generally a feature of modern awards and “to that end, awards do not reflect what has become an increasingly common way of working, in at least some parts of the economy. “Some employees may seek to ‘make up’ the time spent off work outside the span of hours. This arises most commonly in the context of parents of young children, who wish to spend time with their children when they would otherwise be required to work; and to subsequently ‘make up’ this time at night, after their children have gone to bed,” the submission says.

“Such arrangements clearly ­assist employees to balance work and caring responsibilities. Many employers are amenable to accommodating such arrangements, and do in fact permit them.

“However, a strict application of various provisions found in certain awards may prevent their implementation. This is because many awards require that ordinary hours be worked ‘continuously’ and/or they prescribe a span of hours that precludes the ability to work ordinary hours beyond it.”

Ai Group’s head of national workplace relations, Brent Ferguson, said restrictive provisions in awards often prevented employers delivering employees the kinds of flexibilities they wanted.

“For example, there is a glaring need to allow employers to agree to employees working from home to take additional breaks during their day, rather being required to work their hours ‘continuously’; to work shorter shifts than they are currently permitted when they want to; or to take time off in the day and make it up at a time of their choosing even if this is outside of ‘ordinary hours’,” he said.