Jason Sennitt loves his job, but can’t imagine going back to the office up to four days a week. The 53-year-old lives in an outer suburb of Geelong with his wife and two school-age children as well as his elderly mother who has dementia and needs someone to be home.
An employee of one of Australia’s largest energy providers, Sennitt has been told to return to the office at least three days a week, and four days a week from next year.
“Even though I have to travel five hours to do an eight-hour shift, I’m happy to do that a couple of times a week,” says Sennitt, who works in customer service.
“But being in the office … it’s not necessary for me to do my job well and it feels like the business hasn’t really considered this.”
Sennitt has applied for an exemption to the office mandate, but he believes the company’s “broad brushstroke” policy doesn’t take proper consideration of its workers.
His comments come ahead of the 1 August submission deadline for a Fair Work Commission process designed to modernise the award for clerical and administrative workers by taking into account work-from-home arrangements.
The clerks award, which informs the working conditions of millions of Australians, is seen as a test case for the broader workforce amid a growing tussle over flexible work.
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While employees can request flexible arrangements, there is no assumed right to work from home in Australia.
Sennitt’s employer, Origin Energy, says it supports its office-based employees to work from home up to two days a week, with the ability to request additional flexibility.
“We believe a balance between work and home locations enables connection, collaboration, productivity, and health and wellbeing benefits,” an Origin spokesperson says.
Worker relations
Once seen as a rare perk, remote work exploded during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic.
After pandemic conditions eased, the significant time and financial saving from reduced commuting, and flexibility to care for family members, has made many workers resistant to return to the office. Many employees also report being more productive working from home.
Some employers, however, are worried about being compelled to offer flexible arrangements when it is not practical for their business. There is also the enduring suspicion that some workers slack off at home.
The issue has pitted employer association Australian Industry Group against the Australian Services Union (ASU), which has a large base of administrative and clerical members, including Sennitt.
AI Group has reportedly proposed to give employers the right to trade off overtime, penalty rates and breaks in exchange for allowing employees to work from home. The confidential proposal was first reported in The Australian.
The ASU’s national secretary, Emeline Gaske, told Guardian Australia that AI Group wanted to use working from home as an excuse to strip away basic entitlements.
“This is a lurch back in time by the [AI Group] that wants to drag workplace standards back decades if a worker seeks to work from home,” Gaske says.
An ASU members’ survey found that the ability to work from home was “not a perk, but an essential condition that makes work possible”, allowing many workers to manage health conditions, disabilities and caring responsibilities.
Employers and their representative bodies are expected to use the Fair Work process to test whether current provisions are suited to flexible work.
For example, the clerks award ensures employees have at least 10 consecutive hours off after working overtime. If an employer doesn’t comply, the worker earns double their hourly rate.
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Employer groups question if that 10-hour rule should apply if a worker is at home, and therefore does not need to commute. They are also raising questions about what constitutes normal working hours in an at-home setting, given penalty rates often apply outside those hours.
The Fair Work process may also bring clarity to how flexible work interacts with right to disconnect laws.
The AI Group chief executive, Innes Willox, says there is an obvious need to free up restrictive provisions that either prohibit working from home or discourage employers from implementing them.
He says the union is engaging in a “misleading scare campaign”.
“We aren’t arguing that overtime and penalty rates should not apply simply because someone is working from home,” Willox says.
He says the clerks award contains archaic rules that require all ordinary hours are worked continuously and within strict timeframes.
“If employees want to take breaks during their ordinary hours of work to attend to personal matters, like picking their kids up from schools, and instead work those hours in the evening or early in the morning, they should be able to do that, if their employer agrees,” Willox says.
“Obviously, an employer shouldn’t have to pay a penalty for agreeing to an employee request to work this way, but that seems to be what the unions want.”
Flexible rights
During the federal election, the Coalition spectacularly reversed its policy to restrict work from home arrangements for the public service.
Polling found during the campaign that the public service proposal was unpopular, especially among women and working families who have come to rely on flexible work arrangements.
As the submission deadline for the Fair Work process nears, there are growing expectations Labor could legislate a work-from-home right for workers.
Another Melbourne corporate worker, who asked not to be identified, told Guardian Australia that greater flexibility would lead to increased productivity and improved morale.
For them, the only public transport option from their outer-Melbourne home requires a 40-minute bus ride followed by a 55-minute train commute. The bus schedule also doesn’t line up with work hours.
“I leave home at 4.30am to get a ride with my husband,” the worker said. “I’m not allowed to leave [work] early. I still have to stay until 4pm.”
“We find the days [in the office] to be the most unproductive days there are.”