Australia recently gave its workers the legal right to “disconnect,” which allows them to ignore unreasonable out-of-hours calls, emails, and texts from their bosses.
Unions welcomed the legislation that allows workers to refuse to monitor, read, or respond to their employers’ attempts to contact them outside of work hours – unless that refusal is deemed “unreasonable.” They said that it gives workers a way to reclaim some work-life balance.
However, the Australian Industry Group said in a statement that the ‘right to disconnect’ laws are rushed, poorly thought out, and deeply confusing. “At the very least, employers and employees will now be uncertain whether they can take or make a call out of hours to offer an extra shift,” it said.
The law is similar to those of some European and Latin American countries, and research indicates that it benefits employees.
More than 70 percent of workers in European Union companies with a right to disconnect policy considered its impact to be positive, according to a November 2023 study by the EU work-related agency Eurofound.
Employees have been experiencing “availability creep” as smartphones and other digital devices put them in reach of their employers, and according to University of Sydney associate professor Chris Wright, having a measure that restores to some extent the boundary between people’s work and non-work lives is a positive thing, certainly for employees, but also for employers.
Under the legislation, workers may be ordered by a tribunal to stop unreasonably refusing out-of-hours contact, and employers likewise may be ordered to stop unreasonably requiring employees to respond.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hailed the reform, which was pushed by his center-left Labor government. “We want to make sure that just as people don’t get paid 24 hours a day, they don’t have to work for 24 hours a day,” he told national broadcaster ABC.
It is a shame that a right to disconnect law had to be passed, but such a move by the Australian government emphasizes the need to lay boundaries between the work and non-work lives of people, as that line has been increasingly blurred, especially in recent years. What should’ve been unnecessary has been found necessary not only in Australia, but in Europe and Latin American countries as well.
In the Philippines, where the workforce has been among the world’s most exploited, the government may have to consider similar legislation if it is going to be seen as continuing to protect the welfare of the workers.*
