Even when workers are off duty, they are often required to attend to calls, texts, or emails from their boss. However, Australia has now granted millions of workers the legal right to "disconnect," allowing them to ignore unreasonable out-of-hours communications from their employers.
According to new legislation passed by the Australian government, people can now refuse to monitor, read, or respond to their employers' attempts to contact them outside of work hours—unless that refusal is deemed "unreasonable."
This initiative aims to safeguard personal time and promote a more balanced work-life harmony and will come into effect starting Monday.
Hailing the reform, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, while speaking to the national broadcaster ABC, said, "We want to make sure that just as people don't get paid 24 hours a day, they don't have to work for 24 hours a day." He further added, "It's a mental health issue, frankly, as well, for people to be able to disconnect from their work and connect with their family and their life."
While trade unions have welcomed the new regulation, it has received a lukewarm reception from Australia's top industry body.
"The 'right to disconnect' laws are rushed, poorly thought out, and deeply confusing," the Australian Industry Group said in a statement.
"At the very least, employers and employees will now be uncertain about whether they can take or make a call out of hours to offer an extra shift," it said.
The law is similar to those in some European and Latin American countries.
Research indicates that the right to disconnect benefits employees, said University of Sydney Associate Professor Chris Wright.
More than 70 percent of workers in European Union companies with a right to disconnect policy considered its impact to be positive, according to a November 2023 study by the EU work-related agency Eurofound.
Employees are experiencing "availability creep" as smartphones and other digital devices put them in reach of their employers, Wright told AFP.
"Having a measure that restores to some extent the boundary between people's work and non-work lives is a positive thing, certainly for employees but also for employers," he said, particularly in industries trying to lure new workers.
The Australian law, enacted in February, came into force for medium-sized and large companies as of Monday. Smaller firms with fewer than 15 employees will be covered from August 26, 2025.
(With agency inputs)
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