Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Australia Businesses

Australians Fight for the Right To Work From Home Permanently (reuters.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
As corporate leaders call for an end to pandemic-era remote work arrangements, unions in Australia are setting a precedent and fighting back, taking to court the country's biggest bank and wrangling with the federal government to demand WFH, as it is known, to become the norm. From a report: "All the deep changes in the Australian labour market have come out of crises. When you have a jolt, you never return to the way the world was," said John Buchanan, head of the University of Sydney's Health and Work Research Network. "We're always ahead of the pack in the English-speaking world, say compared to the UK, US, New Zealand." Empowered by the lowest unemployment rate in half a century, staff at Commonwealth Bank of Australia took the A$170 billion ($114 billion) lender to the industrial tribunal to challenge a directive to work from the office half of the time.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Australians Fight for the Right To Work From Home Permanently More

Australians Fight for the Right To Work From Home Permanently

Comments Filter:

  • fight ? like how ? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Are they going to fight for the right by pursuing remote work and then contributing majorly to those jobs ?

    Or are they going to "fight" by telling the government to reign down more free stuff on them ?

    • Who is “they” in this context?

  • Someone should perhaps remind them that their internet sucks. The average house has 25x2 and I just upgraded (in America) from 200x10 to 600x600 just to work from home because the delay and sending large files was not working out so well.

    • And? 25/2 is more than enough for most teleworking. Heck we've had no problem teleconferencing with family members who even had a fraction of that speed.

  • From home? Now get your lazy ass back to the plant.

    • Re:How Do You Manufacture A Car (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bjwest ( 14070 ) on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @01:15PM (#63734556)
      Those that work in a plant or factory are already back to work in said away from home place. The people wanting to work from home are the coders, IT workers and paper pushers who sit at a desk all day staring at a screen. I'm with them, though. No need to waste time commuting and polluting up the planet if you can do your job just as effectively from home.

      • Those that work in a plant or factory are already back to work in said away from home place. The people wanting to work from home are the coders, IT workers and paper pushers who sit at a desk all day staring at a screen. I'm with them, though. No need to waste time commuting and polluting up the planet if you can do your job just as effectively from home.

        While that makes sense on paper, it does nothing to address the resentment factor... the notion that its unfair for some in a company to work in the comfort of their home while others HAVE to come into the office. It doesn't address the sometimes massive resentment from other employees who AREN'T coders or administrative types. The morale issues here are not minor ones.

        A senior leader in my org got WFH shot down in my division because he went to the top and complained "If MY guys have to get up and come to

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bjwest ( 14070 )

          Those that work in a plant or factory are already back to work in said away from home place. The people wanting to work from home are the coders, IT workers and paper pushers who sit at a desk all day staring at a screen. I'm with them, though. No need to waste time commuting and polluting up the planet if you can do your job just as effectively from home.

          While that makes sense on paper, it does nothing to address the resentment factor... the notion that its unfair for some in a company to work in the comfort of their home while others HAVE to come into the office. It doesn't address the sometimes massive resentment from other employees who AREN'T coders or administrative types.

          This has been going on, probably, since the dawn of people working in multi-worker environments. The people resenting their fellow workers who are able to work from home are the same people who resent them for working in the cushy office jobs to begin with. They either need to get over it or educate themselves so they too can work in one of those cushy jobs.

          Laugh if you wish, but it's also likely that IT and Admin types are the ones most likely to have their jobs AI'd out of existence in the future, so maybe WFH shouldn't be the hill to die on.

          I don't know what your point here is, the workers on the assembly line or pick and pack departments are just as much at risk of losing their jobs to a

      • Those that work in a plant or factory are already back to work in said away from home place. The people wanting to work from home are the coders, IT workers and paper pushers who sit at a desk all day staring at a screen. I'm with them, though. No need to waste time commuting and polluting up the planet if you can do your job just as effectively from home.

        In addition, once companies discover that remote workers are as efficient as in office ones, they can begin to even more aggressively pursue workers in lower wage areas with the required skill level. It need not be off-shoring as much as lower cost of living areas in country.

    • Such genius (Score:2, Insightful)

      by KalvinB ( 205500 )

      I'm not going into an office because Bob in accounting is lonely or because Steve is operating heavy machinery.

      • You're going back to the office because a billionaire owns a ton of commercial real estate and he'll be damned if the value of that real estate is going to drop just because you want to work home...

        I forget which billionaire but one of them said that all it'll take to get everybody back into the office is a nice little recession. Then you won't have enough bargaining power to say no. He's working on that recession with his pals over at the Federal reserve if you're an American. I'm sure if you're not Ame

        • Also because many CEOs just can't accept that people work better at home. They see the evidence but they just don't feel convinced. Deep down inside they believe people only work when they are watched, and remote workers will be lazy and steal time from them. They might not say it so directly, but this belief is a significant motivator of the push to come back.

          There is a flip side of this to consider, not that anyone will. If we do establish working from home as the new norm for jobs that befit it, we w

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by jythie ( 914043 )
            I don't know.. I work in a hybrid environment and the onsite people are consistently more efficient than the ones who work from home. Granted the ones who are working from home THINK they are more efficient, but mostly because they don't have people to compare themselves to. It isnt' even laziness, they just train up and cross pollinate slower so they are always behind and know less.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      From home? Now get your lazy ass back to the plant.

      The auto industry in Australia died nearly a decade ago because we made cars that were too expensive to sell in America and too expensive and American to sell in Europe.

  • Meanwhile, in Brooklyn (Score:3)

    by Midnight_Falcon ( 2432802 ) on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @01:00PM (#63734516)
    We fight for the right to party!
  • Answer. Never. Not now, not ever.

    • I didn't see anything in TFA saying this should be a right (although TBH I only skimmed it). It sounds like this is all about negotiating contracts.

      I did see several references to record low unemployment, which ought to give workers a strong negotiating position. If that's the contract hill they are willing to die on, knock yer socks off. As other threads have pointed out, this only is relevant to the laptop class: factory workers and baristas still need to show up somewhere.

      With that in mind, I wonder what

    • Answer. Never. Not now, not ever.

      Right are granted and fought for. There's a reason why Australians have a *right* to 4 week holidays, while Americans STFU and get back to work. They fought for those rights and had them codified.

      • These people already have the right to work from home permanently though. What they don't have the right to do is dictate to you or me where they will work from if we employ them. As their employer we get to decide that and if they don't like the arrangement they can work for themselves or someone else who will allow them to work from home.

        Why not describe it honestly? Oh, right.

        • What they don't have the right to do is dictate to you or me where they will work from if we employ them.

          I hereby cordially welcome you to the entire point of this action. You're right, they don't have this right. Yet. Just like they didn't have a right to a 4 week holiday before they fought and campaigned for it.

          Life changes, civilisation adapts, ... well except in America where workers rights are summed up with the word "LOL".

      • Answer. Never. Not now, not ever.

        Right are granted and fought for. There's a reason why Australians have a *right* to 4 week holidays, while Americans STFU and get back to work. They fought for those rights and had them codified.

        Very true, however employers look at the total cost of a worker and 4 weeks vacation, benefits are all part of the total cost and thus salaries adjust accordingly. No one gets free paid vacation time; it's all factored into the compensation.

    • Working from home permanently has always been a right.

  • I'm confused (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Train0987 ( 1059246 ) on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @01:48PM (#63734660)

    Do they not already have the right to work from home permanently? Does the Australian gov't force them to leave their house to work?

    Or does this really mean they want the gov't to ban employers from requiring they come back to the office?

    Right. Pretty big difference. Word games aren't helping anything.

    • The only one playing word games is you. Literally everyone else knows what this is about.

    • It's literally right there in the summary. And forget the summary if somebody is fighting for something then yes they are generally expecting a law to be passed, because realistically we've already fall figured out that commercial real estate prices are heavily dependent on forcing return to office, and with that much money at stake nothing short of a federal law has the power to fight back. .

    • If you have the right to vote, that does not just mean the government can't stop you from voting. It means they must set up polling places, hire poll workers, verify the validity of voting machines, and subject the entire process to audits in order to make sure that your vote is counted accurately.

      If you have the right to an attorney, that does not just mean the government can't stop you from hiring an attorney. It means they have to maintain a staff of bar certified professional attorneys and make sure o

      • The government has no right to dictate to business that they allow employees to work wherever they please.

        You as an individual have the right to choose where you work. If you provide enough value to your employer you might even be able to dictate that you work from home. If they say no you have the right to choose another employer who will. That is called negotiation, the thing unions are *supposed* to do instead of lobbying the government to coerce the employer by threat of force.

        Your teachers have failed

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jythie ( 914043 )
          This highlights why the word 'right' is such a weasel word. None of what you described are rights, they are philosophical points grounded in things you want to do. Rights are things created and enforced by governments, they can literally be anything, and the government is the arbiter of what is and is not a right. All those other things are just 'rights flavored' or themed, more asperiational or narrative than, well, rights.

          • I was incorrect applying "right" to something the government has (is in "government has no right..."). I was using that word in the colloquial sense when a better choice in the context of this discussion would've been "the government has no place..." to avoid this confusion. Governments don't even have rights, they have powers granted to them by the consent of the governed (us). It's a huge difference.

            You could not be more wrong with your definition of "rights" though, and frankly it's a pretty sad reflect

            • I see. You aren't trying to understand the article. You just don't like what the Australians are doing.

              Usually when I hear people talk about "inalienable rights" and "consent of the governed" it's in reference to the American Declaration of Independence. But that can't be what you're referencing can it? I mean, in a conversation about what rights Australians have...?

  • It's not a right, you're forcing companies to change their business model and work structure to accommodate you.

    It's going to be ugly, you're actually going to make it horrible, and upper level people who can work from home will hate you because of what will come next.
    Performance is going to get fine tuned, since they can't see you're working and assume you're reasonably being productive, they're going to come up with new systems to check peoples productivity, new KPIs and metrics to measure how much work y

  • Speaking as someone who works in IT in Australia we have a hybrid model of WFH and in the office.

    If the mob I work for was to mandate full time back in the office I can guarantee a raft of resignations within 3 months as people move to organisations that do support a more hybrid model.

    Finding good people is hard here at the moment and they will vote with their feet.

Slashdot Top Deals

Crazee Edeee, his prices are INSANE!!!

Close