Does your boss send you messages on weekends? Does your work email keep coming long after you go home?
Australian workers can now ignore these and other intrusions into home life, thanks to a new “right to disconnect” law designed to prevent work-related emails and calls from intruding into private lives.
The new rules, which came into force on Monday, mean that in most cases employees will not be penalised for refusing to read or respond to letters from their employers outside working hours.
Supporters say the law gives employees the confidence to stand up against persistent intrusion into their personal lives through work-related emails, texts and calls, a trend that has accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic worsened the distinction between home and work.
“Before digital technology came in, there was no intrusion, people would go home at the end of their shift and there would be no contact until they returned the next day,” said Associate Professor John Hopkins at Swinburne University of Technology.
“Now, globally, it has become common to email, text, and call outside of these hours, even during holidays.”
According to a survey conducted last year by the Australia Institute, Australians will work an average of 281 hours of unpaid overtime in 2023, and the monetary value of this labour is estimated at A$130 billion (US$88 billion).
With these changes, Australia joins a group of about two dozen countries, most of which are in Europe and Latin America, that have similar laws.
Pioneer France introduced the rules in 2017 and a year later fined pest control company Rentokil Initial 60,000 euros ($66,700) for requiring its workers to keep their phones on at all times.
Rachel Abdelnour, who works in the advertising sector, said the changes would help her stand out from an industry where clients often have different working hours.
“I think it’s really important that we have laws like this. We spend so much of our time attached to our phones, attached to our emails all day, and I think it’s really hard to turn that off,” he told Reuters.
The refusal must be justified
For emergency situations and jobs with irregular hours, the rule still allows employers to contact their employees, who can refuse to respond only if it is reasonable to do so.
Determining whether a refusal is reasonable will be up to Australia’s industrial umpire, the Fair Work Commission (FWC), which will need to take into account the employee’s role, personal circumstances and how and why the contact was made.
It has the power to issue a prohibition order and, if it fails to do so, impose a fine of up to A$19,000 on an employee or A$94,000 on a company.
But employer group the Australian Industry Group says ambiguity over how the rules apply will cause confusion for employers and employees. It said jobs would become less flexible and in doing so would slow the economy.
“These laws have been enacted both literally and figuratively out of the blue, introduced with minimal consultation about their practical effects and with little time for employers to prepare,” the group said Thursday.
Australian Council of Trade Unions president Michelle O’Neill said the caveat included in the law meant it would not interfere with reasonable requests. Instead, it would prevent workers from paying the price for poor planning by management, she said.
He cited the example of an unnamed employee who finished his shift at midnight but received a message four hours later asking him to return to work by 6 a.m.
“Contacting has become so easy that common sense is no longer necessary,” he said.
“We believe this will make bosses stop and think about whether they really need to send that text or email.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
