{"id":746908,"date":"2026-06-19T15:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T15:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/746908\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T15:12:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T15:12:15","slug":"wfh-bunnings-ceo-michael-schneider-raises-concerns-over-new-victorian-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/746908\/","title":{"rendered":"WFH: Bunnings CEO Michael Schneider raises concerns over new Victorian laws"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bunnings<\/a> managing director Michael Schneider has warned Victoria\u2019s incoming work-from-home laws could create \u201cstructural inequity\u201d in workplaces across the state.<\/p>\n

The legislation, which will give employees the right to work from home<\/a> two days a week, will come into effect on September 1.<\/p>\n

\"\ufeffBunnings<\/p>\n

\ufeffBunnings managing director Michael Schneider.\u00a0Supplied<\/p>\n

Regular casual and part-time workers will be covered by the laws.<\/p>\n

Small businesses<\/a> with fewer than 15 employees will get an extra 10 months to prepare, with the new rules set to start for them on July 1, 2027.<\/p>\n

Schneider said while Bunnings offered a flexible environment, he wanted to see a fair situation for workplaces across the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe offer an incredibly flexible work environment, both for our support team and also our store team,\u201d Schneider told radio station 3AW.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when I look at this legislation, it\u2019s actually building in a structural inequity in our working environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a whole lot of teams who have to go to work and perform their duties \u2013 our store teams, our distribution teams, our manufacturing teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey do amazing work all the time, but all of a sudden we\u2019ve got a situation where our support teams under this proposed legislation would actually have a legal right to work from home a couple of days a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schneider said businesses were already managing flexible working arrangements.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur view is as a business, we understand the needs of our business, we understand the needs of our team, we have no problem with our support team working from home, but we think we\u2019re really well-equipped to manage that ourselves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just a big believer that it has to be fair for everybody in our society.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe offer flexible work in our stores \u2013 we\u2019ve got part-time team [members], casual team [members], team [members] can flex their hours up, flex their hours down, depending on what\u2019s going on in their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the same for our support centre team.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, it seems to work perfectly well in everywhere else in the country, and I\u2019m not sure that it needs to be different just because it\u2019s Victoria.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmployers do want to offer flexibility, I haven\u2019t spoken to a business leader who doesn\u2019t think flexibility is a good thing, but does it need to be legislated?<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery business is different and their needs are different.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think business leaders are really well-placed to manage that.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 3.7 million Victorians<\/a> are employed, based on data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and more than a third\u00a0already regularly work from home<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Allan government<\/a> has estimated work from home saves Victorian workers more than $5000 a year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bunnings managing director Michael Schneider has warned Victoria\u2019s incoming work-from-home laws could create \u201cstructural inequity\u201d in workplaces across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":746909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-746908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}