Australia’s right-to-disconnect law has come into effect — giving employees the right to refuse contact if their employers reach out to them by phone or email after hours, a type of law that has popped up around the world.
“What we’re simply saying is that someone who is not being paid 24 hours a day shouldn’t be penalized if they’re not online and available 24 hours a day,” said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ahead of the legislation’s enactment into law.
Industry leaders were less keen on the legislation. “I think this is a triumph of stupidity over common sense,” said Andrew McKellar of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The legislation doesn’t stop bosses from reaching out in the first place. And like other right-to-disconnect laws, there’s a caveat: workers will have the right to refuse contact unless the refusal is deemed unreasonable. Whether the request itself is unreasonable isn’t a factor, according to the country’s work tribunal.
That unreasonability depends on a number of factors, like the worker’s role, their personal circumstances, the method and reason for contact, how much they’re disrupted by the request and how they’re compensated for being available or working more.
Right-to-disconnect laws vary from country to country.
- Spain: Some workers have a right to “digital disconnection” and can turn off any electronic devices outside of work hours, during time off (including parental leave), and on holidays.
- Italy: Some workers who fall under a “smart working” agreement are not confined to work specific hours and are instead measured by whether they’ve met goals set by their employer.
- Portugal: Some employers are forbidden from contacting workers outside of their regular working hours.
- France: Under the El Khomri labour laws, some workers have a right to ignore any work-related communications outside of their hours, with policies negotiated between unions and employers.
The laws also exist in Belgium and Germany, and are being considered in the U.K. and Kenya. Critics of the French legislation have called it too vague to be effective. And Ontario’s legislation — which forces companies with 25 or more employees to draft a right-to-disconnect policy — was criticized as toothless.
Experts say most right-to-disconnect laws put pressure on companies to clarify work-life balance policies. But their effectiveness depends on other factors, like what recourse employees have in reporting violations of the law, or even the work culture of the country where the law exists.
New laws have come into effect in Australia protecting workers’ ‘right to disconnect’ and to ignore communications from work after hours if they so choose. Similar laws are in effect or in the works for some workers in Canada.
‘It’s not quite a traditional right’
While various right-to-disconnect laws exist around the world, one thing they have in common is that they’re designed to keep employees from being overworked, said Ope Akanbi, an assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and a faculty member of the university’s Communication and Culture School.
“It is designed to give people some room to sort of take a break from work and focus on other aspects of life,” she said, noting that in countries like Japan and the U.S., there are high rates of workplace-related suicides.
“Health reasons, social reasons are at the forefront of what brings these kinds of laws into being in various jurisdictions,” Akanbi said, while noting that in many countries where such laws have been passed, there’s been an acknowledgement of just how difficult they are to enforce.
“The way the right to disconnect operates is it’s not quite a traditional right. As a matter of fact, some people might go as far as to say it doesn’t add anything new to employment relations.”
In some cases, Akanbi says the law is simply a conversation starter. “It’s something that is supposed to trigger a kind of organizational move to articulate specific expectations about when communications should be initiated or responded to.”
Cross Country Checkup1:52:03Should you have a ‘right to disconnect’ from work?
The federal budget includes a plan to develop a so-called “right to disconnect” policy for federally regulated employees. How would you feel if your boss sent you an email during your time off? Do you feel like you have a healthy work-life balance?
Policies only as good as enforcement measures
Ontario’s right to disconnect policy is more like a “right to have a workplace policy,” said Daniel Lublin, an employment lawyer with Whitten and Lublin in Toronto. “There’s a difference.”
Like other forms of the law, Ontario’s right to disconnect policy came into effect after the pandemic upended traditional working arrangements and blurred the lines between work and life for remote employees.
Lublin described it as a “relatively toothless manoeuvre in the sense that people have a right to have a policy that dictates that they have a right to disconnect, but they don’t actually have a right to disconnect.”
“If you leave employers to draft the policies, they will inevitably draft them in a way that favours them and complies with the law to the minimum extent necessary — in most cases, but not all. So I think more guidance needs to be provided to employers,” he said.
“A policy is only as good as there is a penalty to enforce it, so employees have to have some mechanism to be able to complain that there’s been a violation of the policy.”
National identity might play a role
Akanbi suggests that there’s an incentive for businesses to craft a strong right-to-disconnect policy.
“There’s a sort of PR element to it,” she said. “You don’t want to be that organization that is seen as overworking its employees. So that’s what the law really does.”
She has doubts about whether any of the countries with existing right to disconnect laws have gotten it completely right.
“I don’t think it’s possible to close up all the loopholes and prevent any form of communication afterwards,” she said. “It simply is not practical and that’s why the legislation is couched the way it is.”
LISTEN | Quebec’s right to disconnect efforts:
The question of whether a right-to-disconnect law is effective or not might also depend on the culture of the country or region where it’s been enacted, said Akanbi.
“France has a culture that does not lend itself to overwork,” she offered as an example, also noting distinctions between North America, which tends to have a more intense professional culture, and Europe, where people are more relaxed about work.
“In places where the culture of work is more salient, where people identify with their professional roles, it would be more difficult to have the right to disconnect have a significant effect,” she said.
“You’re fighting a culture that is centred around work as identity.”