The Government’s new work/life balance legislation was written “from the ivory towers of the public service”, according to an employment expert.

Cabinet last night approved the Work Life Balance Bill, which offers a range of new rights to workers.

The legislation gives parents of young children a legal right to request flexible working hours as well as a right to five days of unpaid leave to look after sick family members.

The bill will also extend the right to paid breastfeeding breaks from six months to two years.

Under the legislation, employers that refuse a request for remote or flexible working could find themselves before the Workplace Relations Commission.

"Ivory tower"

On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, Employment Law Solicitor Richard Grogan said the changes will work at big companies – but many SMEs will not be able to cope.

“This is being looked at from the ivory tower of the public service,” he said. “They’re not looking at it from the point of view of the SME sector because there are huge issues in this.”

He said flexible working hours are only possible when jobs don’t have to be done to order or at a particular time of day.

“Take the flexibility change they’re talking about,” he said. “This is one where you can say look, I have a child, they’re under 12 and I need to be able to take them to creche or school every day, so I don’t want to start until 10:30.

“A lot of employers will not be able to offer that facility. If you take a coffee shop, their big time of the day is going to be from around 07:30am to 10am. If somebody is coming in at 10am, they have got to get somebody to cover that period of time.

“On top of that, they’re saying that, once you no longer need this flexibility, you’re going to be entitled to go back to the old job.

“So, you’ve got someone who says, so I’m going to be doing two-and-a-half hours, that’s all I can get from you every day and by the way, when this person finishes this, I can lose my job?”

“No thank you. I’ll get a job somewhere else.”

Flexible working

He said companies with large numbers of staff are already offering flexible working hours – but smaller companies just don’t have the capacity.

“The problem is going to be the SME sector,” he said. “They’re the biggest employers in the country but if you have a corner shop or a small coffee shop, you’ve got two or three employees.

“This needs to be properly thought out. It’s a great idea and I fully support but really when this gets to committee stage in the Dáil, they really need to be bringing in the employment lawyers and the H&S safety lawyers to tease out how this is going to work in practice for the smaller sector.”

Childcare leave

Mr Grogan also warned that provisions in the legislation for the five-days unpaid leave to look after sick family members could unnecessarily complicate a benefit many workers already have.

Under the legislation, parents will qualify for the leave if their child needs “significant care” – something that will need to be diagnosed by a doctor.

“If somebody gets a call from school and they say little Johnny or Mary is getting sick and you need to take them away, is that a serious medical condition or is it not?

“The position on it is, once you put serious medical condition on it, that has to be certified by a doctor. So, it is another layer that is going to cause problems, cost and also dispute.”

He said the legislation also adds a limit that did not necessarily exist before.

“Most employers, if somebody phones in and says I’ve got a sick child, the employer is going to say OK no problem we’ll struggle through,” he said

“The difficulty is that, by including this provision of serious medical condition, that means somebody has to certify it. That is €50 for a doctors cert. This is a layer of complexity we don’t need. You need to deal with this in a reasonable way.”