Julia Gillard has announced plans to extend Australia's flexible work laws to mums and dads returning from parental leave.
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Ahead of her return to Australia from Queenstown, Ms Gillard said her government would also be detailing plans this week to help workers confronted with a roster change.
"[We will] talk about ways in which we can help working people if they're faced with a roster change.
"People make all sorts of arrangements for work, knowing what their roster is, building their child care around it and when rosters change that can be very difficult.
"During the course of the week we will be talking about protection from roster changes."
Details of both plans would be rolled out starting this week and were part of wider reforms following a review.
Ms Gillard said the changes followed on from Labor's overturning of the Liberal Party's Work Choices legislation.
"The focus this week will be on work place relations agenda which is really about work and family life.
"Modern families can find it very difficult to balance the demands of work and the demands of caring for kids and sometimes the demands of caring for older relatives too.
"We want to make sure that our workplace relations system is helping take some of the burden off modern families."
The government would extend the current "right to request" flexible and part-time working hours to mums and dads returning from parental leave, she said.
But it would not be compulsory for employers to meet that request.
"What we found with the current right to request is around 80 per cent of requests are satisfactorily resolved.
"What we wanted to do with the right to request was to change behaviour.
"Formalising the right gives employees the comfort to feel it is OK to ask and it also means employers actually start trying to make it work," Gillard said.
The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Bill Shorten, said: "It is also important that family life is not ambushed by sudden, unexpected changes to rostering at work.
''Child care centres and schools won't change their hours just because the boss might want to change your shifts around.
"It's not about being burdensome or telling employers how to manage their workforce. It's simply asking for respectful treatment and good relationships at work.''
