Unions are asking the national workplace tribunal to change the clerks award so that admin and IT employees start with a built‑in assumption they can work remotely at least part of the week. This unfolds in a labour market where hybrid work has become normal for many desk‑based roles but formal rights still largely depend on individual employer policies, and where the broader debate over flexibility, fairness and business costs is intensifying.
Employer groups tell the commission the proposal would push well beyond global norms and effectively turn remote work into an almost automatic entitlement without clear evidence it lifts performance. Their lawyers point to international research showing only a handful of countries such as Poland, Portugal and Angola have any kind of legal tilt toward approving work from home, and even then it is usually restricted to specific groups such as pregnant workers, carers or people with disabilities. At the same time, employer organisations are asking to loosen the current “ordinary hours” rules for remote staff, arguing that surveys show about three quarters of people working from home juggle personal tasks during paid time and often fail to record their exact hours, which they say leaves businesses exposed to award breaches and rising labour costs.
The dispute looks like it could set a benchmark for other white‑collar sectors and reshape how penalty rates and flexible hours operate in the hybrid era but the outcome is far from settled. Union organisations lean on polling that suggests most Australians want remote work to be the norm for office jobs and believe it boosts productivity, while employer bodies warn that a broad presumption in favour of working from home, combined with limits on changing ordinary hours, may drive up costs, weaken customer service and curb the commission’s ability to adapt awards in the future. How the tribunal balances these competing aims of flexibility, fairness, compliance and business viability seems likely to influence workplace rules well beyond this single award.
