The Fair Work Commission has initiated proceedings, on its own motion, to develop a 'working from home term' in the Clerks Award which 'facilitates employers and employees making workable arrangements for working at home and removes any existing award impediments to such arrangements'.
The Australian Industry Group has been participating in confidential and without prejudice Commission facilitated proceedings to see whether a consensus can be reached on the content of such a term.
It would be highly inappropriate for any party to comment on or otherwise disclose the content of discussions or developments that have occurred in the context of those proceedings. To do so would be a clear and deliberate breach of faith.
The union's alleged comments paint a flagrantly misleading picture of the Australian Industry Group’s intentions.
We will advance a proposal in response to the Commission initiated proceedings that would make it easier for employers and employees to adopt working from home arrangements, by agreement, that suit their circumstances. The potential development of such a term is the purpose of the proceedings.
We have previously identified a range of ways in which the award is operating as a barrier to employers agreeing to reasonable 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.
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 have evolved since the pandemic.
It must also be recalled that the reason these issues came to the Commission's attention was the conduct of a review of modern awards recently undertaken by the Commission at the request of the former Workplace Relations Minister, Tony Burke.
The union's ridiculous attempt to demonise industry efforts to assist the Commission to develop a term that it has indicated should potentially be inserted into awards, 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. We know that accommodating this, when they can, is also important to many employers.
Sadly, some in the union movement seem determined to cling to the notoriously complex web of outdated workplace laws that work against the interests of workers, 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.
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Gemma Daley – 0418 148 821
