The right to “disconnect” from work. New regulations in Australia
The new rules will allow employees to ignore their bosses outside of working hours.
Passed in February this year, the law protects people who refuse to monitor information, read messages and respond to signals from their employers outside of working hours. Similar regulations allowing employees to turn off mobile devices are already in force in France, Germany and some other European Union countries.
The main reason for introducing the ‘right to disconnect’ provisions was to protect workers in a world where, thanks to the development of digital technologies, they were increasingly connected to their workplaces.
Opinions on changing regulations are divided
Reactions in Australia were mixed. While many people believed that such laws would make it easier to achieve a work-life balance, others expressed concerns about the impact of the new regulations on worker productivity and the competitiveness of the economy.
However, as The Conversation website points out, citing the results of a study conducted in Australia, employees in this country performed an average of 5.4 hours of unpaid work per week. This meant that by distributing work tasks to private life (which some have called “expanding accessibility” and others “time theft”), workers in Australia performed an additional 281 hours of unpaid work per year. Its value was estimated at more than PLN 11,000. dollars.
Australian regulations do not prohibit managers from contacting employees at any time, but they do protect employees’ right to refuse. If an employee does not answer the phone or respond to an email, then – under the new law – no disciplinary action can be taken against them or they must be treated differently (for example, through changes to their schedule or strict performance requirements).
However, these provisions allow for circumstances in which an employee’s right to refuse may be considered unjustified. “It will also depend on the role and the responsibility associated with it. It is reasonable to expect a senior manager to respond to an email sent out of office hours, but it would be difficult to expect the same from an ordinary employee in the administration department,” noted Professor Emmanuel Josserand of the University of New South Wales in Sydney. (PAP)
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