Comments on: Australia: employers liable for home injuries of work-at-home staff

By: Mark Biggar

Mark Biggar — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:26:42 +0000

Many Unions disapprove of homework as it makes it hard to organize the workers and so they lobby for regulations like this in an attempt to force workers back to the central workplace.

By: Hugo S. Cunningham

Hugo S. Cunningham — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:59:03 +0000

There was an honorable movement to restrict “homework” a century ago when it meant starvation-wage textile workers crammed into dark, unsafe, and unsanitary tenements.

Modern office work, however, is usually more benign. Australian home-workers may have to organize politically to roll back prohibitively expensive legal standards, just as US homeschoolers organized in the 1980s to roll back attempts to regulate them like public schools.

Nevins raises an interesting point about creeping ADA requirements; does Australia have an equivalent to the “Americans with Disabilities Act”?

By: D

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:43:42 +0000

Crikey.

By: nevins

nevins — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 22:23:32 +0000

Next, your home as workplace has to be ADA compliant even though you are not disabled and see no clients. Prepare to add ramps, elevators and other expensive goodies in order to work from your own home now.

By: DensityDuck

DensityDuck — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:49:43 +0000

I’m looking forward to the court cases where an employer denies a telecommuting request because the employee’s home presents a safety risk, and is promptly sued for unfairly denying a telecommuting request…