Aussies bothered by their bosses at home can now rest assured they cannot be punished for ignoring such after-hours demands. Lawmakers there passed a "right to disconnect" bill designed to end the creep of work into home life—and an explosion of unpaid overtime.
Supporters say the law gives workers the confidence to stand up against the steady invasion of their personal lives by work emails, texts and calls, a trend that has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic scrambled the division between home and work. "Before we had digital technology there was no encroachment, people would go home at the end of a shift and there would be no contact until they returned the following day," said John Hopkins, an associate professor at Swinburne University of Technology.
Several countries have enacted similar bans on out-of-hours pestering, most prominently France, which recently fined a company 60,000 euros for requiring an employee to be on-call without pay.
Previously:
• The anxiety of unplugging and why we should disconnect to connect
• A web magazine you can read only if you turn off your wifi
• Singapore will disconnect entire civil service from the internet
