“For some jobs, there’s no reason everyone has to be together. Where it can be done, why shouldn’t it be?” McManus said on ABC radio Friday morning.
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He said it had been a point of contention between business and labor during enterprise negotiations, adding: “There will be change, and it’s mainly driven by labour.”
But the head of the HSU said the labor deals could encourage staff to stay at home indefinitely in “lockdown” mode.
Hayes said that while it was important for people to adopt practices that eased the pressure on hospitals, it was more important that hospitals and nursing homes were adequately resourced.
“My fear is that we get to a point where people are working from home again that the contributions to the community start to dry up and we start going back to 2021 when we were shut down,” he said.
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“Just starting to work, whether it’s a train driver who has a job, a barista who has a job … just people moving around the community and the flow-on effects for other people in the community, if we’re living with the virus, we have to be able to ensure that.”
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said it was a sign Labor was in power that unions were trying to “insert themselves into every public discussion”.
“But employers are the ones who pay the wages and if they don’t think it’s possible within their business for that person to work from home, that’s the decision that should be made,” he told Nine’s Today programme.
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar described the push as “completely overreaching” and could kill CBDs. “I think they’re grabbing the ball and running into the stands,” McKellar said.
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Australian industry group director Innes Willox said employers “would be wise” not to lock themselves into working from home.
He said the union bargaining claims would test the cooperative approach employers had taken to working from home during the pandemic.
The prime minister said earlier in the week that it was up to businesses to make decisions about working from home, with Telstra and Westpac advising staff to work remotely, a position backed by Australia’s chief medical officer, Paul Kelly.