Australia gives workers right to ignore bosses’ calls and emails outside of work hours | Labor Rights

Sydney, Australia – Australia is extending its laid-back reputation to the workplace by giving employees the ‘right to disconnect’ when they’re not working.

Australian workers were given the legal right on Monday to ignore emails and phone calls from bosses outside working hours unless it is deemed “unreasonable”.

The law is Australia’s response to the growing blurring of lines between people’s professional and private lives, as employers become increasingly reliant on digital communications and working from home becomes more popular in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Australia’s centre-left Labor Party hopes the measure, introduced as part of a package of labor reforms that includes new rules on casual work and minimum wage standards for delivery drivers, will ease the pressure on workers to keep an eye on their phones when they are supposed to be relaxing and spending time with loved ones.

“What we are simply saying is that someone who is not paid 24 hours a day should not be penalized for not being online and available 24 hours a day,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a news conference introducing the legislation in February.

Workplaces that breach the rules, which are enforced by the country’s Fair Work Commission tribunal, face fines of up to A$93,900 ($63,805).

Australia is not the first country to introduce the right to be offline from work.

In 2017, France introduced legislation to protect workers from penalties for not responding to messages outside of working hours. Germany, Italy and Canada have taken similar measures.

But the perceived need for such a measure in Australia, the first country to introduce the eight-hour working day, runs counter to the country’s international image as a “happy land” of sun-drenched beaches and laid-back people.

Despite Australia’s laid-back image, researchers, experts and labour activists say the country is struggling with a growing culture of overwork.

According to a report from the Australia Institute, the average Australian worker performed an average of 5.4 hours of unpaid work per week last year, while workers aged 18 to 29 performed 7.4 hours of unpaid work.

Before she got her first job as a saleswoman in Melbourne, Chinese migrant Wong had heard that Australian employers generally do not expect their employees to work more than nine to five and do not contact them during their free time.

But Wong, who is in her late 20s, says her boss often asked her to complete tasks after she finished work.

She said her experience with overtime was actually “worse” than in China, which is notorious for its “996” work culture, where some workers are forced to work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week.

“I worked as a private tutor when I was in China,” Wong, who asked to be identified by her last name, told Al Jazeera.

“Back then, I occasionally had to respond to messages from parents in the evenings, but that didn’t take up much personal time.”

Chris Wright, associate professor in the discipline of Work and Organisation Studies at the University of Sydney, said Australians are often seen as people who “play hard”, but they also work longer hours than people in many other developed countries.

Wright cited the 2018 OECD Better Life Index, which found that Australian full-time workers spend 14.4 hours a day on personal care and leisure, less than the OECD average of 15 hours.

The index also found that 13 percent of Australian workers work “very long hours”, compared to the OECD average of 10 percent.

“There are a number of studies in Australia that indicate that technology is blurring the boundaries between work and personal life,” Wright told Al Jazeera.

“This is always a culture that is characteristic of work in Australia. People may be working standard hours, but once they leave the office each day, they are often still working.”

Wright also noted that despite long working hours, Australia has seen slow productivity growth over the past two decades, with labour productivity for the economy as a whole falling by 3.7 per cent in 2022-23.

Wright said he hopes the Right to Disconnect law can boost productivity in Australia by encouraging businesses to consider more efficient approaches in the workplace.

“There are often countries with shorter working hours… like France with its 35-hour week. That has been criticized a bit… but it has actually been a contributing factor in France having quite good productivity results,” Wright said.

“And I think the right to disconnect laws will help (Australian companies) think more creatively about how they can work smarter.”

Michele O’Neil, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, said her organisation has been campaigning for the right to be offline for years.

“We’re very pleased that it’s now a legal right for workers in Australia, and that’s important because the simple principle should apply: that you should get paid for all the work you do,” O’Neil told Al Jazeera.

Business lobby groups have expressed their displeasure with the law.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black said the issue around allowing employees to relax outside the office should be addressed in the workplace rather than through legislation.

“The combined effect of the government’s new laws, including new definitions for temporary workers and self-employed workers, will increase bureaucracy and union power while reducing productivity and hitting our economy at the worst possible time,” Black told Al Jazeera.

“Our labor laws should encourage more people to work, rather than creating more bureaucracy when hiring people.”

The new law does not prohibit employers from contacting employees. Bosses can argue that an employee’s refusal to communicate is unreasonable. This leads to a debate about whether employees feel confident enough to actually ignore calls and messages.

Wong, who was frustrated by her boss’s frequent communications outside her working hours, said she would be reluctant to exercise such a right for fear of receiving a “bad rating” in her reviews.

Still, the law could lay the foundation for companies to improve Australia’s “always on” work culture, said John Hopkins, an associate professor of management at Swinburne University of Technology.

“(The law) will hopefully stimulate conversation about what is reasonable and unreasonable contact outside of working hours,” Hopkins told Al Jazeera.

“It will actually stimulate discussion about what kind of contact is already happening and why that contact is happening. Why are employers contacting their employees outside of their working hours – is that essential? And hopefully it will lead to a reduction in that unnecessary contact,” he added.

“But most importantly, it gives the employee the right not to read or respond to it until he or she is back at work.”