Commonwealth Bank Australia sued over asking employee to work from home 'permanently'

At a time when the COVID-19 graph is receding with the number of cases decreasing significantly, people around the world have returned to their normal lives, with offices also ending their work-from-home systems. While many have started returning to their offices permanently, a section of people continue to work from their homes as their jobs don’t require them to be in the office. Amid such a situation, a bank employee in Australia in a strange move has sued his company after he was asked to work from his home permanently. Well, this might sound very different and bizarre for many of us, but the employee did have some logical reasons behind the same. In a report by the Australian Financial Review, a man who worked as a financial planner for the Commonwealth Bank Australia (CBA) sued his office after they refused to pay him redundancy pay after he turned down their offer to work from home. According to the report, the bank after shutting its retail financing planning arm offered the employee a new comparable job along with bonuses at the insurance company, AIA. While the planner initially accepted the role stating that he won’t receive his redundancy pay in case he rejects the offer, he later went on to turn down the same as he did not want to work from home, reported The Daily Mail.

Following this, he sued the bank, seeking AUD $172,000 (£96,152) in redundancy pay, interest payments and civil penalties from the bank.

Why did the CBA employee refuse to work from home permanently? As per the action obtained by the Australian Financial Review, the former employee in his action has mentioned that working from home would be much worse than his old job as it would be a clear case of “intrusion” in his personal life and would lead to tensions with other family members. He also added that there is insufficient space at his home, making it difficult to create a private office for work.