Be Flexible For Families, IRC Tells Employer

By Workplace Express

In a ruling that is instructive on balancing employees' caring responsibilities with business needs, the IRC has found that listed healthcare company CSL Limited showed "sheer bloody-mindedness" in its approach to setting hours for a female employee who needed to finish early to pick up her child.

Deputy President Ken Ives in June ordered the company to conduct a three-month trial of the hours the officer had sought.

In reasons for decision handed down this month Deputy President Ives indicated he wasn't convinced by CSL's arguments that the officer needed to work its preferred hours because of operationalrequirements.

He found that it wasn't essential for the employee to be present after 3pm, that the company hadn't properly investigated options that would have allowed her to leave work early, and that some reasons the company had given opposing a 3pm finish "appear to be post hoc rationalisations".

The company's insistence that the employee work beyond 3pm on Mondays "appears to be nothing more than sheer bloody-mindedness", he said.

CSL had proposed an alternative in its closing submissions that would have involved the officer returning to work immediately after picking up her child. But this was "not a practical and workable proposal," Deputy President Ives said.

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