Edited by maklukpenggoda at 27-8-2024 02:32 AM
SYDNEY – Is your boss texting you during the weekend? Work e-mail pinging long after you’ve left for home?
The new rule, which came into force on Aug 26, means employees, in most cases, cannot be punished for refusing to read or respond to contacts from their employers outside work hours.
Australian employees can now ignore those and other intrusions into home life thanks to a new “right to disconnect” law designed to curb the creep of work e-mails and calls into personal lives.
Supporters say the law gives workers the confidence to stand up against the steady invasion of their personal lives by work e-mails, 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 Associate Professor John Hopkins from Swinburne University of Technology.
“Now, globally it’s the norm to have e-mails, SMS, phone calls outside those hours, even when on holiday.
The changes add Australia to a group of roughly two dozen countries, mostly in Europe and Latin America, which have similar laws.
Pioneer France introduced the rules in 2017 and a year later fined pest control firm Rentokil Initial €60,000 (S$87,000) for requiring an employee to always have his phone on.
Ms Rachel Abdelnour, who works in advertising, said the changes would help her disconnect in an industry where clients often have different working hours.
New Straits Times
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