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Special Issue: Telecommuting: Office Space Without Walls

By Rosanna Sattler, Nancy Puleo and Laura Otenti
June 30, 2008

Telecommuting simply means working from a distance. It can include working from home or any other alternative work site. This article focuses on the most typical scenario, working from home; however, many of the same issues may also apply to employees who perform work-related tasks away from the office, wherever that may be. This article does not attempt to provide a comprehensive list of every issue that telecommuting presents, but rather, examines some of the most important issues in the following four areas: employee status for tax purposes; wage and hour; reasonable accommodation under the ADA; and workers' compensation.

Many employers allow their employees to work from home or a remote work site. While an estimated 12 million employees telework more than eight hours per week, that statistic fails to describe adequately the extent to which telecommuting has become a way of life. See Tahmincioglu, Eve: The Quiet Revolution: Telecommuting. msnbc.com, Aug. 19, 2007, available at http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/20281475/ (last visited June 10, 2008). The reality is that approximately 45 million employees perform some part of their job away from the office thanks in large part to advances in remote access technology. See Qualters, Sheri: Telecommuters Are Reaching Out to Sue Their Employers. The National Law Journal, Dec.15, 2006, available at http://www.law.com/jsp/LawArticlePC.jsp?id=900005552578. The ubiquitous hand-held devices allow employees to be 'on-call' to receive work-related communications 24 hours a day wherever they are. Many employers also have software that allows remote access by home computer to e-mails, databases, desktops, programs, and whatever else an employee typically needs to perform the job. Because teleworking can also be as simple as completing paperwork at home after hours or working from a satellite office, most employers have “telecommuters.'

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