Unions warn of new WFH battleground as bosses look to trade off entitlements

Confidential documents reveal employers are seeking the right to trade off entitlements in exchange for allowing employees to work from home, a proposal unions label a ‘dummy spit’ from big business.

The Australian Industry Group is proposing a new working from home clause which unions warn would 'drag workplace standards back decades'.

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Employers are seeking the right to trade off overtime, penalty rates and breaks in exchange for allowing white-collar employees to work from home, a push unions warned would “drag workplace standards back decades”.

Confidential documents obtained by The Australian reveal employers are proposing a new working from home clause to the Fair Work Commission that would allow the trading off of key entitlements in the clerks award in return for employees working remotely.

Australian Services Union national secretary Emeline Gaske said the proposal by the Australian Industry Group would allow employers to refuse to pay overtime, remove penalty rates, eliminate breaks and roster staff for as little as 30 minutes a day “all because someone works from home”.

“This attack is the biggest act of workplace discrimination I have seen as a unionist and a ‘dummy spit’ from big business after their anti-worker agenda was rejected at the last federal election,” Ms Gaske told The Australian.

The “strictly confidential” documents prepared by the AIG set out proposed “facilitated working from home arrangements” along with a 22-page analysis of the current clerks award and why a raft of individual clauses “constitute an impediment to WFH”.

Clauses relating to overtime, penalty rates, allowances, breaks and hours of work would be able to be changed or removed by agreement between employer and worker.

In setting out why the various clauses are impediments to working from home, the detailed analysis says the justification for the existing penalty rate provisions and the requirement for a 10-hour break after working overtime does not apply given the employee is working from home and does not need to commute.

Ms Gaske said granting the AIG proposal would see working from home used as an excuse to strip away basic entitlements, from overtime to penalty rates, rest breaks and even minimum shift lengths.

“This isn’t the thin end of the wedge – it’s the thick end of it,” she said. “If the AIG successfully rips away workers’ rights in the clerks award just because you work from home, what can’t they come after?”

She accused the employer organisation of pushing to gut existing protections for workers based on where they did their job. “This is a cynical and backward step that would drag workplace standards back decades,” she said.

“This is a ‘rights and cash grab’, plain and simple. This is big business coming into people’s homes and taking their hard-earned pay and right to reasonable hours work.

“After Peter Dutton’s spectacular misstep on work from home in the election, you would think big business would have learned. Instead they are trying to sneak in through your back door to do what the Liberals couldn’t. Stripping away your rights, starting with those who work from home. The ASU will fight tooth and nail to stop it.”

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said the organisation had been participating in the confidential proceedings to develop the working from home term and it would be “highly inappropriate” for any party to disclose their content.

Accusing the ASU of painting a “flagrantly misleading picture” of the Australian Industry Group’s intentions, he said the employer group had previously identified a range of ways in which the award was operating as a barrier to employers agreeing to working from home arrangements.

“The reality is that in many respects the award is completely out of step with the realities of both current working practices and the desired level of flexibility that many employees want in order to help them balance their work and personal commitments,” he said.

“It was written at a time that assumed that employees were, by and large, still working from their employer’s office or premises, and has failed to evolve to reflect the seismic shift in employee working practices and preferences that evolved since the pandemic.”

Mr Willox said the union’s “hysterical attempt to demonise industry efforts” to assist the commission to develop the working from home term, and “to characterise them as a ‘dummy spit’, is frankly bizarre and predictably unproductive”.

“The last election demonstrated the importance people place on working from home, and we know that accommodating this, when they can, is also important to many employers,” he said.

“Sadly, some in the union movement seem determined to cling to the notoriously complex web of outdated workplace laws instead of constructively and cooperatively exploring how regulation of working arrangements can be genuinely modernised in a way that is both fair and flexible for all parties.”