Intended changes by the Work Where You Want Act
The bill was introduced on Jan. 27, 2021, before being passed by the House of Representatives on June 5, 2022. The bill would require employers with at least 10 employees to treat a request for workplace adjustment in the same way as a request for adjustment of working time or hours. This would mean that, after enactment of the law, the employer would only be allowed to refuse a request to adjust the workplace if a compelling business or service interest prevents it. The employee would be allowed to request his employer to work at home, or rather in the office, or in another suitable and usual place.
Senate consideration
On September 12, 2023, the Senate debated the bill. During this debate, most of the groups seemed to find the bill "sympathetic. However, some spokespersons also expressed concerns. For example, the bill would create more regulatory burden for employers. Others doubted the usefulness and necessity of the law. In the end, the bill was rejected two weeks later, on September 26.
Impact of rejection on practice
Rejecting the bill means that employers do not have to adjust their assessment of employee requests to work somewhere other than their usual workplace. Employers need only "consider" such a request, but can easily reject it. In practice, however, not much will change for employees. Most companies allow employees to work hybrid, which means that they will be required to work in the office some days and work from home the other days. A large proportion of workers cannot work from home, such as workers in healthcare and construction. So for this group of workers, the bill would not have brought any changes anyway.
In short, employees cannot force their employer to work from home or elsewhere in the future. However, most employees already have agreements with their employers about working from home, so in practice not much will change as a result of the rejection of the Work Where You Want Act.
