Working from home an ‘employee benefit’ that must be ‘underpinned’ by productivity

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry CEO Andrew McKellar says it is not clear if companies can get higher productivity with people working from home. New pay deals containing generous “working from home” rights for federal public sector workers are set to be voted up in some of the biggest government departments next week, according to The Australian. The move would extend the new flexibility clauses to 85,000 government employees. Under the “working from home” clause, which the federal government and the Community Public Sector Union (CPSU) expect to apply across 103 agreements, agency caps that in practice have limited the right to work from home to two or three days a week are scrapped. “This is very strongly an employee benefit, it would be something that employers, workplaces are likely to agree to if they can see it has already been underpinned by productivity,” Mr McKellar told Sky News host Steve Price.