Morning commuting time in Melbourne’s central business district on Friday, March 27.
Photographer: Sarah Pannell/BloombergWorld-First Work From Home Laws Threaten Melbourne’s Economy
Melbourne workers will soon get the legal right to work from home two days a week, a move opposed by small and big businesses.
Melbourne cafe owner Michael Hannah looks over the half-empty lunchtime tables and frets how much worse things will be when the state government enshrines a world-first right to work-from-home later this year.
“Not only us as a cafe gets affected; you have a gym that had 3,000 members shut down, it affects the 7-Eleven, it affects the chemist, it affects anything you can see here,” Hannah said. “You look at this now and you think, are we in the city?”