Australia latest country to adopt ‘right to disconnect’ rules

Tired of feeling obligated to respond to evening and weekend missives from your supervisor?

Under a new Australian regulation that went into effect this week, employees of most companies Down Under can choose to ignore communications from their bosses outside of their normal work hours.

The “right to disconnect” rule that kicked in Monday doesn’t prohibit employers from sending those messages, but protects employees who “refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact or attempted contact outside their working hours, unless their refusal is unreasonable,” according to the Australian Fair Work Commission , a business regulatory body.

The new law also grants workers the right to ignore work-related communications from co-workers in their off hours.

“It’s really about trying to bring back some work-life balance and make sure that people aren’t racking up hours of unpaid overtime for checking emails and responding to things at a time when they’re not being paid,” said Sen. Murray Watt, Australia’s minister for employment and workplace relations, according to a report from NPR .

Call me maybe

Australian companies with fewer than 15 employees are exempt from the restriction until next year and some off-hours communications are allowed, depending on the employee’s area of responsibility and the nature of the outreach.

While the new regulation stipulates that workers and their employers must make an attempt to resolve disputes over off-the-clock communications, the Fair Work Commission can levy fines that can run as high as $60,000 on employers who fail to comply.

According to the Fair Work Commission, certain matters need to be considered when determining whether or not an employee’s refusal is unreasonable. They include:

• The reason for the contact or attempted contact

• How the contact or attempted contact is made and the level of disruption it causes the employee

• The nature of the employee’s role and their level of responsibility

• The employee’s personal circumstances, including family or caring responsibilities

• Whether the employee is compensated or paid extra for remaining available to work when the contact or attempted contact is made or working additional time outside of their ordinary hours of work.

Labor groups, like the Australian Council of Trade Unions, celebrated the new protections and said the change “will empower workers to refuse unreasonable out-of-hours work contact, enabling greater work-life balance and reducing the burden of unpaid labor while families face cost-of-living pressures.”

“Today is a historic day for working people,” ACTU President Michele O’Neil said in a press statement . “The union movement has won the legal right for Australians to spend quality time with their loved ones without the stress of being forced to constantly answer unreasonable work calls and emails.”

Downside to disconnecting?

National surveys have found broad support for the protections among Australians but some groups are critical of the new worker protections and say they will have negative impacts on the country’s economy.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black said the changes would further hamper an Australian economy that is already under duress.

“These laws put Australia’s competitiveness at risk by adding more cost and complexity to the challenge of doing business, and that means less investment and fewer job opportunities,” Black said in a press release . “At a time when productivity has flatlined and insolvencies are increasing, we can’t risk making it harder to do business with added red tape.”

According to the BBC , over 20 countries, mostly in Europe and Latin America, have previously adopted right-to-disconnect rules. Similar rules were part of a proposal put forward in California’s state legislature earlier this year but the bill was shelved, effectively defeated, by a legislative appropriations committee in May.