Remote working bill criticised as a ‘lost opportunity’

Proposed remote working legislation will give an employer the right to say no to an employee's request to work from home "because I say so", an Oireachtas committee has heard.

Members of the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment were critical of the heads of The Right to Request Remote Working Bill 2021, which they claim is vague and weighted in favour of employers.

The committee is currently conducting pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, which the Government has deemed a priority and is seeking to have passed before the Oireachtas summer recess.

Sinn Féin employment spokeswoman Louise O’Reilly TD said the heads of the Bill, if enacted, would only give employees the “right to be in a bad mood about not having their request granted” if they request remote working.

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She said the current proposal would only only allow an employee to appeal a decision to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) if an employer does not tell them why they are being refused. She predicted this would allow employers to refuse grounds for remote working "because I (the employer) say so" .

Ms O’Reilly compared it to a mother telling her child that she does not have to give a reason for refusing something.

She suggested that the legislation is “out of kilter and balanced in favour of the employer. There is nobody who believes that this is going to deliver for people.”

The Dublin Fingal TD said the proposed legislation was framed in negative terms with 13 reasons given why employers can refuse to approve a request for remote working. She suggested that it should be framed positively and remote working should be granted “to the greatest extent possible”.

Fianna Fáil's Senator Ollie Crowe said the Bill should be a "good news story" but currently has too many flaws. Even as an employer himself, he said he believed it was "too heavily stacked against employees".

“Companies naturally need to monitor their employees, but this is over the top in my view,” he said.

‘No balance’

Labour employment spokeswoman Senator Marie Sherlock said the Bill was not the "landmark legislation" that the Government claimed it would be, and could end up being a "lost opportunity". She said a new employee would have to wait 26 weeks before they could request permission to work remotely, and they would then have an "inordinate" wait of 12 weeks before getting an answer.

“The grounds are so wide as to make it meaningless and there is no proper right to appeal a refusal,” she said. “It is rigid, conservative and very much a ‘right to request’ legislation.”

In response, Department of Enterprise assistant secretary general Dermot Mulligan said the legislation was landmark in the sense that it was the first time that an employee would be given the right to request remote working.

He said the right balance was “not an easy thing to arrive at” and the department was still working through legal and policy issues to find an appropriate balance.

Mr Mulligan said the idea was to create a “floor” of a minimum right for employees and that the legislation will not impede any employer from offering any remote working arrangements that suits.

“We want to promote remote working generally,” he said.

Ms Sherlock asked the department officials why distance from the office was a grounds for refusal in the remote working scenario. An employee can refuse if he or she thinks there is an inordinate distance between the proposed remote working location and on-site location.

Department official Wendy Gray said those grounds for refusal were included not for employees living in Ireland but rather those living "three or four hours away plane ride away". She said it would give employers the option of considering whether or not its employees should be allowed to work from abroad.