I work for a very large international company. For at least 10 years now they have allowed people in my department to choose to work from home. We have several people who have moved out of the home state of the corporation and were able to keep their jobs. Now, my employer is demanding that the people who live locally and work from home come back into the office. Most of us work from home because we have children and will be forced to put our children into daycare. It is not an issue of job performance and this isn't being done company wide - only in our department. Our coworkers who live out of state have not been forced to do this. My question is, is it breaking any kind of labor law for them to make the local workers give up the benefit of working from home and not making the out of state workers do the same thing?

It may be discrimination, but it's not illegal discrimination. Being able to work at home is a perq. If the company wants to limit it to non-local employees, they are perfectly within their rights to do so. "Local employee" is not a legally protected characteristic under which a claim of illegal discrimination could reasonably be made.

If the change falls too heavily on a particular protected class, the company might have a difficult time justifying the change. I seriously doubt that will be the case since the difference seems to be based on location and not a protected characteristic.

Your costs have gone up. Commute time plus day care.

You might be able to negotiate an increase in pay or benefits to compensate you for these additional costs. One way of doing this is for the company to pay your child care expenses rather than pay you more. You and they would pay taxes on the additional pay, but if the child care became a tax deduction for them, without having to pay employment taxes and the like (FICA, unemployment, workers comp), then you could both be better off.

I don't disagree with ScottB overall. However, Leslie, you did say that "most" of these workers had children; that means not all of them do, so even if parental status were protected in your state (and I don't think it is), if it could be shown that ALL local employees were required to come back into the office (regardless of whether they had children or not), I still wouldn't see an illegal discrimination claim.

I don't disagree with ScottB overall. However, Leslie, you did say that "most" of these workers had children; that means not all of them do, so even if parental status were protected in your state (and I don't think it is), if it could be shown that ALL local employees were required to come back into the office (regardless of whether they had children or not), I still wouldn't see an illegal discrimination claim.

Oh, I see no illegal discrimination here.

I was merely suggesting a way to get paid for the additional costs.

Oh, I see no illegal discrimination here.

I was merely suggesting a way to get paid for the additional costs.

Can't hurt to try.