–Report by Apurva Jain

As North American country corporations struggle to stimulate employees back to offices, the Dutch parliament approved legislation to ascertain home operating as a right, setting the European nation to be one of the first countries to enshrine such flexibility in the law. The legislation was approved by the lower house of the bicameral parliament of the European nation on Tuesday. It still desires a nod from the Dutch senate before its final adoption.

Currently, employers within the Netherlands deny any request from employees concerning functioning from home. Beneath the new law, employers should contemplate all such requests and provide adequate reasons for refusing them. Last month, Scotland declared that its public sector employees will be offered a four-day work week, however in exchange for pay cuts. The legislation is going to be introduced by Steven van Weyenberg, a member of the pro-European D-66 Party, and Senna Maatoug, a lawmaker of the Green party.

They are planning on submitting the proposal before the summer recess and they are hoping it will be passed before summer. This law has received a lot of support from the workers. “It permits them to seek out a higher work-life balance and scale back time spent on travel,” said Maatoug, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The employers are not supportive of this law. With fourteen percent of the hands already operating remotely 2 years before the pandemic, per Eurostat, the acceptance of remote operating is far higher within the lowlands. There has been a shift in the attitudes of people regarding work due to the pandemic. Several employees continue to seek the flexibility which was available for the last two years. However, as we are coming out of the pandemic the firms are trying to meet the demands. The concept of working from home has thus become a debatable issue.

Last month, Tesla Chief Elon Musk issued a notice for employees at the corporate to either come back to the office or leave. But with the changing times and requirements of society, legislation has to catch up to the concept of work-from-home.