In some places, the next battle in the war over remote work may be fought in legislatures, not HR departments.
The United Kingdom, Ireland, and New Zealand have already passed laws giving workers the right to request remote work and to have the request considered fairly by their employers. Canada extends similar rights to federal employees. The EU does so for parents or caregivers of young children.
Now, the Australian state of Victoria is considering taking things a step further. There, lawmakers are weighing a proposal to establish a blanket right for eligible employees to work from home two days a week.
If enacted, the measure would represent a noticeable escalation in the push to enshrine workplace flexibility in law: instead of merely giving employees the right to ask for remote work, Victoria would effectively shift the burden onto employers to justify why an eligible worker cannot work remotely.
That distinction is important. Most remote work laws adopted elsewhere stop well short of guaranteeing that employees can work from their home offices or kitchen tables. Instead, they establish a process: workers can ask for a flexible arrangement without being dismissed out of hand, and employers generally must consider the request and provide an explanation if they reject it.
In the UK, employees have had a legal right to request flexible working for years, and reforms that took effect in 2024 made that right available from an employee’s first day on the job. Ireland’s 2024 rules similarly created a formal right to request remote work, although employers can still turn down requests after considering factors such as the nature of the job and the potential impact on the business.
Victoria’s proposal would move closer to treating remote work as a right, as opposed to a benefit granted at an employer’s discretion. That makes the debate there particularly relevant at a moment when many large employers are moving in the opposite direction.
Across the corporate world, companies that embraced remote work during the pandemic have tightened attendance requirements, increased the number of mandatory office days, and in some cases ordered employees back five days a week.
The result is an emerging divide over who ultimately gets to decide where work happens: individual companies, or governments.
The proposal in Victoria has already sparked a fierce political and legal fight, with business groups warning that it would intrude on employers’ ability to manage their workplaces and critics questioning whether the state has the constitutional authority to impose such a mandate. How that fight plays out could help determine whether other governments see remote work as a workplace perk or a right worth protecting.
Could the trend toward enshrining remote work in law someday extend to the United States?
Don’t hold your breath, University of Florida Levin College of Law professor Rachel Arnow-Richman told Fast Company.
Aside from the most progressive states, like Vermont – which has had a law in place since 2013 giving workers the right to request flexible work arrangements, including work-from-home – it is unlikely that legislators will be able to pass remote work laws any time soon.
“Broadly speaking, [remote work] is a business issue, not a legal issue” in the United States, she said, noting that the US is largely unique among Western, industrialized countries in having “at-will” employment – i.e., allowing employers to fire workers without cause.
The US is also far behind most Western, industrialized countries in adopting labor protections like paid sick leave and paid family leave, Arnow-Richman added. This means pro-labor legislators have more important issues to address before they can get to remote work.
“There are bigger fish to fry,” she said.
