Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has addressed the nation’s ‘work from home’ conversation, and the benefits it has for employees, saying that the “we shouldn’t have a one size fits all approach”.
The Fair Work Commission recently began investigating whether it needs to change the basic rights for award workers. About 2.2 million workers on award wages could be impacted by the findings as the review will make recommendations to the federal government on whether flexible work arrangements should be a legal entitlement.
This has come just a week after the right to disconnect was made into law, allowing workers to take their employers to the Fair Work Commission if they are penalised for failing to respond to out-of-hours contact.
Albanese told reporters in Sydney that while there’s no other ‘work from home’ legislation being drafted, the government would continue to work with unions, businesses and workers to make a difference to the national economy.
“Women’s workforce participation is at a record high and that is one of the factors, now you can’t work from home as a nurse at this facility because you’ve got to work with patients, so it isn’t one size fits all,” Albanese said.
In June of last year, female unemployment fell to an all-time low of 3.3 per cent, following the shift in more people working from home.
Leonora Risse, Associate Professor in Economics at the University of Canberra, shared that “before the pandemic, a greater share of men than women worked from home. Now it’s a greater share of women.”
The latest HILDA (Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia) data shows that three years on from the pandemic, the share of the workforce who work at least partly from home went from 25 per cent in 2019 to 36 per cent in 2022.
“It’s hard to work from home in construction … remotely, but for many people, it provides a flexibility it means as well in terms of productivity improvements, that rather than spending up to three hours, many people travel an hour and a half each way to and from work. That activity can be done more productively,” said Albanese about working from home entitlements.
“I think that these issues are worked out between employers and employees.”
Albanese also noted that working from home has been very positive for working parents, and that it’s important to look at what is appropriate for working from home, where it boosts productivity and where it can enhance workforce participation.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has been questioned about the Fair Work Commission’s investigation into working from home as well, and has said the government was “presiding over a wish list of the union movement”.
He said the coalition supported flexibility, but not driving down productivity, stating that the Albanese government is siding with union bosses over workers.
“Flexibility is fine for workers, and we encourage that, but, in the end, we have to be careful that the Albanese government just doesn’t side with the union on every occasion, because all that happens is if the price of wages go up too dramatically in an inflationary environment, you’ll end up with much higher prices for consumers,” said Dutton.
A discussion paper released by Fair Work in January found evidence that remote work did not impede workers’ overall productivity levels, instead suggesting that it gave carers and parents more time to juggle home and work responsibilities. The paper did, however, find that work from home could raise challenges for employers when it came to on-the-job mentoring and “spontaneous collaboration”.
Workplace Minister Tony Burke said there were plenty of examples where working from home brought “mutual benefit” to both employers and workers, so “it makes sense that the Fair Work Commission is saying okay, let’s check and work through submissions and see how that fits through the awards system”.