The right to remote working is non-existent.
The employee’s right is to ask the employer to be allowed work remotely.
All the employer has to do is consider the request fairly and objectively and the employer’s duty is discharged.
Amazon have ordered all of their employees back to the office and it will be interesting to see how other large employers react to Amazon’s move.
Did you know that Amazon have 4,000 employees in Ireland working in their cloud computing arm, AWS, alone? That gives you a lot of clout with any government.
When the legislation was being drafted to deal with the question of remote working the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland was a significant voice in the discussions and meetings designed to capture the concerns of interested parties.
The American Chamber got what it was looking for: “the employee should have completed probation, have completed the requisite training required and developed an understanding of what the role entails”.
This view is reflected in the legislation.
The key point in the legislation is the employer only needs to consider the request in an “objective, fair and reasonable manner”.
That is what TikTok did in this case from the WRC, a case TikTok won in resisting the employee’s claim to remote working: