Bosses mandated them back to the office. They took legal action instead.

Washington Post via MSN ^ | May 6, 2024 | Danielle Abril, Taylor Telford

[cymbeline]

“The nature of many jobs is analytical which is best done in isolation. “

That’s me. I like people but group efforts aren’t what I do best.

[Cronos]

There are 3 cases:
1. Those who were hired to work remotely and have it in their contracts
2. Those who were hired to work partially in the office
3. Those who were hired to work in the office but that changed and there was an addendum signed

[Cronos]

Legally, unless specified in the contract, you can’t work in other countries - or in most cases, in other states.

[Jonty30]

Sure, legally.

But how many companies would figure that out, if you are using a VPN>

[Cronos]

It depends on the job and what is the task.

I work in analytics and program management — now for the core work of development + unit, integration, stress, regression and extreme point testing, these activities can be done from home by individuals or with online collaboration.

For requirements gathering and initial analysis (or HL analysis) it can be done at home.

But for deep-dive analysis and design, I look for in-person workshops. Nothing beats a group of people around a whiteboard.

So it depend son what and where

[Svartalfiar]

He may have a case, given his health condition. As I understand it from corporate training, Federal law requires reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities.

If the article is correct, it doesn’t appear the company tried to make the accommodation.

Only after the lockdowns is work from home a reasonable accommodation in any industry except sales or IT. Or I guess phone call center guy. But the big issue here (for him at least) is 'BACK'. What accommodation did he have before the lockdowns? I'd bet he was in the office five days a week, with his medical issues, no problem. Why should he now require such a majorly different accommodation when nothing actual has really changed from pre-lockdown to today?

employer denied his request citing in-person job duties.

They already started giving him three days a week at home, and that, to me, sounds way beyond reasonable for a job that actually has in-person duty requirements. How in-person they actually need is beyond the excerpt, so I'll take it at face value. But even if that's more of an excuse and not that definite, two days in the office is still more than reasonable.