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Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

• toomuchtodo 2y ago
  UK is up next: https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/08/20/the-right-to-disconnect-what-is-it-and-what-is-europe-doing-to-protect-workers https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/08/20/the-right-to-discon... By jurisdiction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_disconnect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_disconnect
• billybuckwheat 2y ago
  I don't live or work in any of those places, but I've been ignoring work emails and calls after hours for a long time. Helps that 1) I don't have a work phone, 2) apps that my company uses on my personal phone, and 3) never log into the company network or services on my own laptop. In the few instances when I was called out about it, I asked Could the message/call have waited until the following morning/Monday? The answer was almost always Yes.
  • toomuchtodo 2y ago
    This does not stop an employer from potentially disciplining or firing you. Laws do, because they bind. Implicit contracts and hope are not a strategy, with regards to worker rights and protections.
    • Bostonian 2y ago
      That's unrealistic. Managers who are unhappy with workers ignoring emails will find a reason to fire them, not promote them, or give them a smaller bonus.
      • HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
        With that logic you could throw out any labor protection law. Let's keep it constructive.
      • ehnto 2y ago
        It sets the rules, workers will have to fight for it to be followed still. But sociopathic management now knows workers have a foot to stand on in court, enterprises will be inclined to make it policy. Less sociopathic management might realise they were being assholes and dial it back a bit. Some managers genuinely don't realise that the current "norm" is not fair, since they are deep in the zeitgeist. Countless exceptions sure but there's no denying this is a good attempt at change.
    • rufus_foreman 2y ago
      What stops my employer from potentially disciplining or firing me is first of all, that I am good at what I do, and second that I negotiate from a position of strength. If my employer wants me to work off hours, I mean maybe I will, if I don't have anything going on, and I'll take some time the next day where I won't work as compensation for doing that, I won't ask permission. If I do have something going on, I'll say, "Can't do that. Have something going on". They're fine with it. They're reasonable people. Why would I work for unreasonable people? I would work for someone else. If they actually did fire me? OK, maybe I look for another job, but probably I'm retired. I saved my money. I negotiate from a position of strength.
      • sfpotter 2y ago
        Sounds like you live in a world of incredible privilege. Not everyone is so lucky.
        • StressedDev 2y ago
          Nope - A large portion of the world works like this. If you work for a place which demands you work all of the time, you either work for an abusive employer, or you get paid a lot of money to be at their beck and call. If the employer is abusive, find another job. If you are paid a large salary to be a slave to company, consider finding a job with a better work/life balance.
          • sfpotter 2y ago
            I think you have a poor understanding of what most of the world looks like. Most people on the planet exist in tenuous circumstances which do not allow them to simply go find another job, let alone an employer that isn't abusive, etc. The luxury of being able to worry about these things and take meaningful action to achieve them is truly a recent phenomenon that is not widely distributed.
          • kergonath 2y ago
            > Nope - A large portion of the world works like this. If you work for a place which demands you work all of the time, you either work for an abusive employer, or you get paid a lot of money to be at their beck and call. If you mean that most employers are abusive then yes. That’s why there are laws like this one. Non-abusive employers can ignore it because they were already doing the right thing.
    • jay_kyburz 2y ago
      I'm no lawyer, but I am an Australian and know the hoops you need to jump through in order to fire a full time employee. An employer who is prepared to put in writing that you will be fired for not working unpaid overtime (responding to email) is in for bad time.
    • ivann 2y ago
      Wait, can an employer fire you even if you didn't make a fault? What country are you in?
      • NeoTar 2y ago
        Probably the US - it's scary over there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment
        • Der_Einzige 2y ago
          Our work culture is a strong part of why the US is so economically dominant. Reap what you sow “I work to live not live to work” crowd. Your destiny is to be further economically colonized by the “I live to work” crowd.
          • TremendousJudge 2y ago
            Or maybe it was all the military interventions that punished anybody who ever dared to question that domination
          • ivann 2y ago
            This strike me as a very naive view of the world.
            • Der_Einzige 2y ago
              Look at how dominant the USA is compared to the europeans who love to make fun of us for working so hard. The USA is about to be flung into another golden century due to its dominance in GenAI. Frogs/the EU will be too busy eating caiver served by rude waiters to realize that huggingface and mistral are all they have to compete with us. Eventually they won't be able to afford the caiver anymore. You laugh, but look at how the UK economy is doing. That's the future of Europe. Yeah it sucks to have a bad wlb work culture, but the alternative is losing what makes America so awesome.
  • StressedDev 2y ago
    Same here. The fact is no one can be on call 24/7. People need downtime. I have never worked with a manager who demanded people be contactable at any time. I have been on call but that makes sense. Note that on a good team, being on call is easy because the service rarely goes down.
  • patrick451 2y ago
    I have paging app installed my on phone, and that's it. If it is really, truly urgent they will page me. I have never been paged. Nobody has ever complained.
  • Aachen 2y ago
    > Helps that 1) I don't have a work phone, I have a work phone, but that's for making calls and doing other mobile stuff during work hours. Nobody expects me to use it outside of those hours, that's not really related to having one. Do your colleagues only get one when they're expected to be online 24/7?
  • space_oddity 2y ago
    You've set some healthy boundaries when it comes to work-life balance, which is great!
    • 0xEF 2y ago
      This is important, right here; healthy boundaries. The best time to set them up is right at the start, too. I've had 3 employers that privided me with a phone and laptop because the jobs involved travel, but I made very clear that work hours are work hours, so when I am off the clock, so are those devices. The respected that each time because the expectations were negotiated upfront, instead of waiting for one party to get ticked off and trying to pivot from that.
  • poincaredisk 2y ago
    I don't get it. How could they even expect you to read work emails outside of work hours? Especially since you don't have a company phone. Reading company emails on a private phone sounds like a huge security breach, and may not even be legal. And if anyone from work (who is not also my friend asking to hang up) calls me on my private phone, I'm reporting them.
• aussieguy1234 2y ago
  Generally I'll only answer for actual production emergencies and I'll expect that I'll get time in lieu or overtime payments. I'll probably still keep doing that.
• Prcmaker 2y ago
  With getting no overtime, no time off in lieu, and managers perpetually confusing a 'problem' with an 'emergency', I'm glad to see this happen. If it will actually make a difference though, I'm yet to be convinced.
  • guidedlight 2y ago
    It will be most interesting how this applies to teachers, who often have to prepare lessons and mark work outside of hours.
    • Yodel0914 2y ago
      The teacher situation is strange. One the one hand, they often do seem to work outside of school hours on lesson prep and marking. On the other hand, they generally don't work during school holidays (12 weeks/yr). Also, given that most school days here are ~9am to ~3pm, I wonder how much of that "after hours" work actually falls within the standard 40hr work week.
      • BLKNSLVR 2y ago
        Like most things, there's a gaping chasm of variance between teachers that are phoning it in and teachers that want to engage their students in learning. I know a teacher who leaves for work at 6:30am, gets home after 5:30pm most nights, cooks dinner for the family, and spends the rest of her evening marking work and preparing lesson plans for the next few days. Then there's preparing reports, which is like a 6-week lead-time task in addition. During holidays she's definitely more relaxed, but still spends an absolute sh*tload of time preparing lessons for next term. She's specifically on one end of the spectrum, but that's also what it takes to get a class of up to 30 students to actually pay attention and make some worthwhile progress at their schooling. She chooses it though, she loves it, she lives for it. I couldn't do it to that degree without going insane.
        • Yodel0914 2y ago
          That's amazing, but all-too rare. I think teachers have a very tough job, and many (most?) of them are not very good it at. My kids have had teachers who constantly shift assignment due dates because they're not ready, half-arse their lesson planning and tell the kids to do the rest at home, and are generally unable to manage a classroom.
• jimbob45 2y ago
  Almost every message I send after hours saves me double the time during the workday. Otherwise, I would just save it for the workday.
• nwbort 2y ago
  Yes, but 'Employers should be able to justify contacting professionals after hours based on common contract clauses that say a worker’s high salary includes reasonable overtime'. See: https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/the-right-to-disconnect-starts-on-monday-here-s-what-you-need-to-know-20240809-p5k10e https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/the-right-to-...
  • ehnto 2y ago
    Indeed, but that doesn't effect most people since most people are not on high salaries. It should help for people like my mother, who get paid sweet fuck all but are expected to work 10-12 hour days, where 1-3 of it is homework and they are effectively on call 24/7 without compensation. There will be countless exceptions but it's a good thing to have in law, so it can be taken to the ombudsman or used in court.
  • whatindaheck 2y ago
    Go to college and get an education so you ~~can make a good living~~ have the opportunity to work more hours. I understand this should hopefully help low wage earners that are taken advantage of. That’s great. The US, my country, could really take some inspiration here. But why are we rolling back the achievements of the standardized 40 hour work week for a certain group of people? It feels like this is pitting the poor against the middle class. All the while the wealthiest of wealthiest are relaxing in yachts complaining that their grocery baggers can’t be called in to work overtime.
  • RachelF 2y ago
    For me, the interesting thing about Japanese work culture is that they pay white collar jobs overtime. Paid overtime seems to be a blue-collar only thing in most English-speaking countries.
    • aragilar 2y ago
      Paid overtime is covered in my contract (with rates detailed etc.), as is leave entitlements (and even how long I can be expected to work without a break). I suspect my contract is not unusual in Australia.
• selcuka 2y ago
  > To cater for emergencies and jobs with irregular hours, the rule still allows employers to contact their workers, who can only refuse to respond where it is reasonable to do so. This clause pretty much invalidates the rest of the rule. Why should an employee need to justify their inability (or unwillingness) to respond? I can understand the "jobs with irregular hours", but otherwise shouldn't it be a best effort thing, without any obligation?
  • hanniabu 2y ago
    And what constitutes an emergency. If nobody's wellbeing is at risk then imo it's not an emergency, but I doubt that how a company will interpret it.
    • simondotau 2y ago
      The CEO might argue their wellbeing is at risk if they don't receive the bonus for reaching their quarterly targets.
  • dopylitty 2y ago
    This only makes sense if emergencies are strictly defined. For instance "don't come to the office there's a bear inside" is an emergency. "the crud app you support fell over" is not an emergency. If the latter is an emergency to the company they should staff for 24/7 support, not rely on exploiting people during their off hours to provide free support.
    • Aurornis 2y ago
      > "the crud app you support fell over" is not an emergency. I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed to learn that situations impacting business-critical operations would be considered emergencies. The assumption that Australia just outlawed the concept of having an on-call rotation is not supported by the article. The article says requiring an employee to be on-call 24/7 for general purposes would indeed be illegal. There was another example that someone could not be required to come in for a surprise shift with only a few hours of notice overnight. But completely eliminating planned on-call rotations is not part of the goal.
• fuzztester 2y ago
  dammit, i thought aussies were more freedom loving than even usians. i have met and interacted with some of them, and have read a good amount about them, too. did aussies not have this right, earlier? I don't know if it should even be called a right, because it seems obvious. to me, it sound more like an attack by employers on employees, to say they cannot do such a thing - before this so-called "right" was ”given". thoughts?
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • strken 2y ago
    Employment contracts here usually state that you work X hours a week, likely 38 or less unless your union did a bad job, and can only work more if the hours are "reasonable" according to a bunch of criteria. This was previously enough to cut down on most of this kind of nonsense, but has not proven sufficient in the age of smartphones.
    • fuzztester 2y ago
      wow. just the existence of smartphones seems to be not enough of a reason to drop these contracts or criteria. in fact one would think it should be the opposite, because smartphones are so disruptive and distracting. maybe the unions need to understand that and incorporate that understanding while negotiating.
    • fuzztester 2y ago
      >This was previously enough to cut down on most of this kind of nonsense, but has not proven sufficient in the age of smartphones. the kind of technology that is available in the world should have nothing to do with the laws regarding freedom of the people.
    • fuzztester 2y ago
      depending upon fuzzily worded employment contracts and the non-deterministic enforcement of them, and depending upon whether your union did a good job or not, are not the characteristics of freedom.
• hankchinaski 2y ago
  Like in the UK where this already exists. In most contracts you get to sign a waiver. Show me the law and I’ll show you the loophole
  • walthamstow 2y ago
    You may be confusing the right to ignore out of hours comms with the Working Time Directive that the UK got with EU membership? The UK doesn't have the former (yet). On the latter you are correct, I have signed away my right in every white collar job I've had. I couldn't sign the contract without signing that right away.
• PlunderBunny 2y ago
  Maybe we should think of these things as employment flags? There's no right-to-disconnect in my country, but sometime this year my boss started putting "I don’t expect a response to this email outside of your normal working hours." on the end of his email signature. I might not be earning FAANG money, but it's just another sign I'm working for a 'good' company.
  • frosting1337 2y ago
    A lot of companies here are pretty good. It's the ones that aren't that necessitate the law change. My workplace, for instance, published the formal policy last week and the accompanying announcement was honestly bordering on anger about it. My team is pretty good, but other teams have been having to work out of hours. It's a good change.
  • warbeforepeace 2y ago
    I work for FAANG and have had one page outside of working hours over that last 12 months. I do not respond to emails on weekends or evenings. I do not turn my work laptop on during vacation at all. I leave at home in a safe.
    • Insanity 2y ago
      Totally different experience here working for FAANG, at least as it pertains to pages. For emails / slack etc I found it easy to ignore while working as an engineer, but much harder now in a management role. Even entirely disconnecting when going on vacation can be tough. That said it is mostly self imposed. Over the past 2 years it was rarely the expectation to work outside regular hours (but did happen).
      • antimemetics 2y ago
        > it is mostly self impose This is the key. Of course companies don’t object to you working extra hours. You shouldn’t do it - it sets a bad precedent for those who you manage.
      • 2y ago
• nomilk 2y ago
  Another 'good in theory' idea. Trying to run a business in Australia is 'death by a thousand paper cuts'. Far too many rules. Letting individuals interact freely creates good outcomes 90+% of the time. Most of these rules are cost-benefit negative because the administrative burden of adherence exceeds the benefit of the new rule. Politicians and govt departments like them though; they get to put a dot-point on their list of achievements. Unfortunately Australia has become a business-backwater (the upper bound of our capabilities is to dig stuff out of the ground and ship it overseas). Sorry if this sounds negative, but every rule - however well-intentioned - steals attention and creativity away from entrepreneurs, slows the economy, drives up prices, reduces customer service, and benefits large incumbents who can withstand the burden.
  • joshgermon 2y ago
    If you rely on exploiting the fact that your employee does not have the right to ignore your call outside of hours, your business shouldn't exist. What kind of take is this? It says it gives them the right to ignore, not to sue the business if they do call.
    • nomilk 2y ago
      Employees benefit from calls out of hours. How? The employer is able to offer better service to customers, and make more money, and the employee can negotiate a higher salary from the more profitable business. Employees who are inflexible cannot offer the same level of service to their employer and its customers; they'll on-average be paid less and measures like this increase production costs, making goods and services slightly more expensive. This law reduces the extent to which flexible employees can add (and extract, via hight salary!) value, and the extent to which customers receive timely service.
      • ceejayoz 2y ago
        If overnight service is that critical and profitable, hire a night shift.
• anon-3988 2y ago
  This is fine for big companies and government but startups is going to die because of this.
  • ern 2y ago
    Startups, and anyone else can still roster support.
• joshgermon 2y ago
  Keep in mind all the low-income employees who are harassed after work for trivial reasons that can absolutely wait by power-trip managers who will now feel a tiny bit more empowered to say no than they did yesterday. I think it's a great thing even though it doesn't benefit me directly.
• Gustomaximus 2y ago
  For emails, I generally feel these are a 24hr thing. I turn off email alerts so I can focus on my tasks then check a few times a day only. I used to filter CC emails into their own folder for reading maybe once a day which worked mostly well but occasionally people can't seem to use to/CC as they are supposed to. Calls I always try to pickup or callback asap but my job calls usually means urgent. Chat like Teams I'm mixed. Often it's urgent but too many people use Teams in my current company like email and it's really disruptive to work flow getting 50 unimportant messages a day + long "just one more thing' task requests. Ive considered putting an auto-reply of "if it's not on JIRA it's not a task" but that would not come across well. But generally I feel a better law change would be right to work your contracted hours. Put the onus on the company that they have to get your workload to the contracted hours or pay overtime. Some exceptions for execs on top end pay, but generally this would be a better win for employees, and then you can get that after work call but your being paid extra, which in itself will make people think twice about calling etc when they know there is a cost.
  • cj 2y ago
    Isn't what you're describing the difference between exempt and non-exempt employees? In the US, the protections you're describing exist if you make less than ~$60k. Above that amount and you're exempt from being entitled to overtime.
    • anon373839 2y ago
      > if you make less than ~$60k. Above that amount and you're exempt from being entitled to overtime. This is incorrect. Entitlement to overtime pay varies from state to state. In California, for example, there are complex rules but for most employees, the analysis ultimately boils down to whether you spend more than 50% of your working hours performing exempt duties. If you don’t meet this threshold — even if you are highly compensated and have an executive title — you are not exempt and you must be paid overtime. It also does not matter if the company is paying you on a salary or hourly basis.
• steelframe 2y ago
  I've dabbled in management a few times in my career. This meant attending manager-only meetings and trainings. I'll never forget one time when a manager in a focus group said something along the lines of, "The tech sector is going through a rough patch, so we can turn the screws on our employees and they'll have to take it because they will have a hard time trying to find a job somewhere else." This is at a company where most of the employees are on work visas, so losing their job can very rapidly escalate into having to leave the country in short order. After I picked my jaw up off the floor I realized I simply lacked the scruples I'd need to be "one of them." I also started looking into every legal protection I had available to me in my jurisdiction. I know not every manager is like that. I'd like to think I wasn't. But there are enough of them that think that way that legal protections often need to be there.
  • nine_zeros 2y ago
    > After I picked my jaw up off the floor I realized I simply lacked the scruples I'd need to be "one of them." This is the reason why I always tell young engineers to treat companies with utmost business-only mentality. It's not that all managers are bad. It's that the company rewards psychopathic behaviors - that aren't easily apparent to humble people. Companies are merely out there squeezing and exploring employees. Employees should feel free to return the favor. In short, Fuck the corporations. They fired the first shot.
    • dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
      > that aren't easily apparent to humble people. This is indeed a major problem. The stereotypical engineers is such a humble personality. A kind of almost idiot-savant syndrome.
    • antimemetics 2y ago
      Corporations are a form of “slow” AI - this is literally a war against the machines
    • bruce511 2y ago
      Unfortunately the word "company" encompasses hundreds of millions of entities, of enormously different cultures, attitudes, ethics and so on. Personally, I think behavior does (and likely has to) evolve with size. Unfortunately bigger tends to be worse. Culture is also primarily a top-down flow. I'd the CEO is a screamer expect screamers all the way down and so on. Of course there are companies, too many of them, that behave badly. There are too many people who treat other people as nameless, expendable and exploitable. There are also many others, the ones that don't make the juicy comments on reddit, which behave well, treat people as people, and so on. Treating your work-place as a hostile environment can be emotionally and mentally draining. It can be counter-productive if the environment desires to support you. Equally, if your environment is hostile then at least be looking elsewhere. Not all companies are created the same so there are likely better options elsewhere (although getting those posts is harder because people tend not to leave.) Your advice rings true for many companies. But people stay in those places because they believe everywhere is the same. So a more nuanced advice might be to understand the culture and behavior where you work and decide if that's a culture you want to assimilate, and support, long term or not. For the record, the place where I work has never expected anyone to do emails etc out-of-hours and you'd be laughed at if you suggested people should behave otherwise.
• jay_kyburz 2y ago
  I'm an Australian and I'm really surprised this law is needed. I would be very surprised to hear somebody was fired for ignoring email after hours.
  • 2muchcoffeeman 2y ago
    I’m in Australia too. I’ve never been at a company that dysfunctional either. But there’s always some manager that’s not reasonable. This is just a formality that puts what most reasonable people already do into writing.
• ghiculescu 2y ago
  Lots of people missing nuance or seeing this rule change say what they want it to say, rather than what it actually says. Employers are still allowed to contact employees anytime. Previously you could theoretically be terminated for not reading or replying to messages from your employer outside hours. Now there are restrictions on that. That’s all that’s changed.
  • sumedh 2y ago
    "Previously you could theoretically be terminated for not reading or replying to messages from your employer outside hours. Now there are restrictions on that. " Now you will be terminated for "some other" reason.
    • tialaramex 2y ago
      Previously, when you show to a tribunal or whatever institution that they fired you for not working out of hours despite insisting it was some vague "job performance" reason, the tribunal says well, that's technically legal anyway, it's just rude, so too bad. Now, it's illegal. So "some other reason" has to be watertight. If in the process of concocting a "some other reason" you trip another law, you don't get a Do Over because you were trying to break a different law, instead you have more trouble.
• ludston 2y ago
  My personal experience is that Australia doesn't have a huge problem with this generally. But mileage may vary. If it were a huge problem then vested interests would lobby fiercely against the law, and it seemed to pass without much challenge or comment from the public here. This law might seem like a big deal if you're working in a place without labour protection laws, and therefore you're used to constant abuse from management and live in permanent anxiety of some petty retaliation. But here it really ought to just be a formalisation of normality unless you're working with particularly poor managers.
  • tagh 2y ago
    I also personally haven't had issues with this in Australia, but have seen it happen to friends who work in legal (many times).
  • scorpioxy 2y ago
    This hasn't been my experience in Australia. I don't believe this law will make a difference at all either. The reason is that if you refuse to do it, then this will come up during performance reviews as something else. "More responsive" or "available for your teammates" or "more of a team player" etc. Of course the manager won't be asking you in any direct way or in written form to be available outside working hours. The incentive system will just be changed to make it your choice to do so. Conducting interviews over the last year or so had people telling me of their stories. The labor protection laws didn't seem effective except for clear cut cases and even then you'd probably just get a bit of money and you would've ruined your reputation of getting hired ever again because you're a trouble maker.
    • ludston 2y ago
      The law won't make a difference for us, but it will probably make a difference to the super-market employees being phoned at 6am and asked to take on an extra shift today.
      • paranoidrobot 2y ago
        Being called to change/schedule shifts is one of the things that I saw in news reports that it's explicitly permitted.
• nine_zeros 2y ago
  I think a much favorable law should be that employers must automatically log after hours overtime and pay for such overtime for ALL employees besides the C-Suite. Aka, any communication sent to employees MUST be billed to the company. The company can figure out if they want to pay ALL employees overtime pay or shut down their communication systems after 5 pm.
• frays 2y ago
  Interesting to see the US perspective on this.
• paradox242 2y ago
  I already do this in the US.
• kyriakos 2y ago
  If an employee doesn't respond outside working hours can't he be penalised in a different way or miss out in promotions if other employees do? Clearly this law is a good thing but i find it hard to see how it can be enforced.
• Apocryphon 2y ago
  Between this and the New Zealand government's ruling on Uber, seems like ANZAC countries still maintain worker's rights.
• sailfast 2y ago
  How on earth would one even begin to enforce reverting the dismissal of an employee "because they didn't answer their phone after hours"? "Employee was dismissed due to poor performance." "Employee was dismissed because they were not delivering enough value compared to their peers..." These ideas and protections are great in theory, but very hard to manage in practice, and I'd imagine it gets tested on the first serious appeal.
  • Yodel0914 2y ago
    The same way any other labour protection laws are enforced?
• anewguy9000 2y ago
  do they have the right to employment??
  • stephen_g 2y ago
    Please define 'right to employment', I think that has a special meaning in the US that isn't really a thing elsewhere?
• crossroadsguy 2y ago
  In 2024 it hurts really bad to read all such great news from other nations while sitting in India where industry leaders, startup founders, and politicians are actively trying to impose things like 70 hour work week or so and take away whatever labour protections (which is very little and mostly ineffective and practically none if you are in "corporate") we have and even encroach upon the Sundays and Saturdays (the latter being working for most of the Indian workers anyway).
  • abhinai 2y ago
    Oh you're same guy from another thread. You seem like you're on some kind of a mission here. My experience was 100% different than you. You seem to be generalizing from a small sample and paint an entire country with that baseless generalization.
    • crossroadsguy 2y ago
      Why would you go this length and do this witch hunting? Do you have some issue in reading other people's views? I have commented this same view twice in different context and you consider that a "mission"? This is a behaviour I have seen so widespread here that it seems like a trend. In fact it's a thing! Go asking on r/india and see how that is. Now that would also be a very small set for you, isn't it? Well, that is definitely orders of magnitude higher than hn when it comes to this particular country. So get a feel there maybe? Well, what is your mission? Since I mentioned my country's name (which I guess could be yours as well but I am not sure) is this somehow become a "prestige" issue for you? I don't know whether a tag works here, but @dang is this kind of witch-hunting or attack acceptable here? Or is it rather kosher?
• zombiwoof 2y ago
  Eric Schmidt : hold my beer
• BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  As an unambitious fellow happy to grind away at the bottom of the ladder, this is how I've conducted myself most of my career. My brief forays into management have generally impacted my work-life balance too far the wrong way, and correcting said balance ran into incompatibilities with expectations (not in performance mind you, just in the ambiguous and subjective 'that which is required of leadership'). Y'all can have it.
• red_admiral 2y ago
  I like the Swiss implementation of this. A manager _can_ contact an employee on a Sunday, but then the employee is immediately on weekend-rate overtime even if they just got an email with "deal with this next week". So, many companies have systems that hold back e-mail sent outside of working hours until the next working day unless specially authorised and costed. Never underestimate an economics-based solution to a legal problem, a.k.a. "if you really want to ban it, tax it".
  • KoolKat23 2y ago
    I'd rather not work on the weekend, even for an overtime rate. Thanks.
    • silisili 2y ago
      That's the benefit of working on a small team/startup. Whoever smelt it dealt it kind of situation. Basically, at first at least, whoever's application is erroring is getting a call when it breaks. It sounds bad, but it encourages everyone to write more fault tolerant code. Way moreso then a random bigcorp with an on call team.
      • aqme28 2y ago
        This is how you end up in situations where no one wants to work on the team that actually needs the most help
      • grecy 2y ago
        I used to get called all the time because our in house infrastructure would fall over, and my apps would crash. It didn’t matter how many times I explained my apps couldn’t run without good infra, and that I wasn’t on that team, and that I had no access or authority to do anything… when my apps when down I got called. So actually, I really don’t like your idea.
        • majewsky 2y ago
          Or, to be more specific, you don't like your company's implementation of their idea. We have the same setup in my org, but we get to define alerts ourselves. All our own alerts are built so that they don't go off if the underlying infra is borked, and only if there's something we can actually do on our level. We are being kept honest because there is a big kerfuffle when an incident is reported by customers first (instead of alerting).
• 2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
  I thought that's normal? I switch off my work phone and laptop and then I do not even know if I get any mails ... is this only a thing in Germany?
  • lnsru 2y ago
    Some people work on weekends even in Germany. Saturday is normal workday according German law. It’s more or less personal preference. At least one has a choice.
    • 2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
      some people work at night and on sunday ... i didn't know that means i'm not allowed to sleep. thanks for letting me know.
      • lnsru 2y ago
        You’re welcome! You should read your work contract and/or Betriebsvereinbarung regarding work on weekends. It’s clearly defined.
        • 2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
          I have a Betriebsvereinbarung with your [insert female family member of your choice] for this weekend.
          • CRConrad 2y ago
            Sei kein Arschloch.
• tuggi 2y ago
  http://archive.today/jv4nz http://archive.today/jv4nz
• vsaustraliabtc2 2y ago
  [flagged]
• nicbou 2y ago
  This is already the case in Germany. It also applies to vacation and sick days. Above all, it's deeply ingrained in German culture, so that no one expects to reach you outside of your working hours. I help people settle in Germany, and it's one of the main cultural aspects I cover. The other is how normal it is to take sick days.
  • Aachen 2y ago
    Netherlands also The only people that I see working 24/7 are those who run their own business, which made sense to me because everyone else has a contract that stipulates the obligations of both sides. Unless that doc says that you're expected to work outside of work hours (which sounds self-contradictory), that's not part of the agreement. I'm surprised Australia needed a law for that
    • nicbou 2y ago
      The culture extends to self-employed people to an extent, but it can be hard to set boundaries for yourself when you are building your own thing. I've been in business for 7 years and fully self-employed for 4 years. Last week was my very first vacation without my laptop.
  • ryan69howard 2y ago
    Result: complete loss of freedom to have flexible working hours and use the company office space
    • lljk_kennedy 2y ago
      I don't think that's true. I'm in EU and I've allowed engineers to shift their working hours based on personal circumstances - like start remotely at 7am and finish at 3PM. I also encourage engineers to take the time they need for life stuff - kids school run, doctor, physio, sick aunt, whatever - because ultimately we measure the outcome of their work, and not the sum of hours worked. For the office space - do you mean popping into the office at odd hours, like evenings or weekends? I'd probably be encouraging my engineers to talk to me about why they need to do it and not enjoy their non-working hours. If the work is too much, we solve for that. If they're going all in on something they love, I'll want to make sure they're not on a path to maybe burning-out. Everything in context.
• ralferoo 2y ago
  I feel bad for people in this situation, but at the same time I think it's kind of strange to allow yourself to be in this situation. Personally, I maintain a very strict separation between work devices and personal. Work email, slack, and whatever else I need for work lives on my work devices only. Personal email, whatsapp, etc live on my personal devices only. Most of the companies I've worked at add a remote wipe functionality to the phone, and even though I understand the business case for this and I've never heard of it being misused, that's not something I want on my personal devices. I usually only have a couple of exceptions to this policy - I usually have my personal gmail logged in at work, and occasionally for very specific reasons, I might temporarily install "work" apps on my personal phone, for instance when I want to leave work early to catch a train, but need to be in a work meeting later in the day, or to stay in contact with colleagues when out at a conference, etc. These apps get removed again when I no longer need them. When I leave work, the work devices get switched off. In most cases, I leave the work devices at work, including laptops and phones, assuming I have somewhere secure to leave them at work. Almost every company I've worked at, I've had a lockable chest of drawers, so I just put things in there. In the ones without, the laptop stays on the desk plugged in, and I might take the phone home even though it's switched off. I've almost never been asked why I haven't seen or replied to an out-of-hours communication. On those few occasions, I've just said "All my work devices were switched off for the weekend" and there's been nothing further said. In the very few cases where I was expected to be on call, it was previously agreed and so I took the necessary devices home. Obviously, things changed a lot with the shift to remote working during and after COVID, but I still maintained the same boundaries. Even now I have my own company, I have separate computer, desks and even chairs for work and personal use. Slack and work related e-mail is only on the work devices. If I want to do some work over the weekend (which feels acceptable now it's for my benefit), I physically sit in a different half of the office to do that.
  • Draiken 2y ago
    I don't think it's always an explicit choice. I joined a company and despite asking many questions to try and avoid weird policies that could affect work-life balance, after joining I discovered they had certain types of code that had to be shipped outside of their client's business hours. Due to timezone differences, that meant extremely early or late hours for me. I like the company but absolutely hate this. However I can't just leave because of this. Even if I wanted to, finding a new job is not an easy task and it's exhausting. This is why laws are important. You don't have to figure this out for every company you interview. If they do it, it's illegal. You can change your default to a reasonable expectation.
• rapht 2y ago
  At individual contributor level, such schemes may work -- anyways, people are paid by the hour so anything outside hours is already dubbed 'overtime', and companies are bound to care. At management level (i.e. top management talking either between them or with the management levels just below), where hours don't get counted (in some countries such as France, it's just 'days'), it really boils down to the top management's culture. Workaholic top management = every manager is expected to be workaholic... and Darwin does the rest: soon enough, only workaholics remain.
• DavidPiper 2y ago
  I wonder what this will mean for the various forms of on-call. I've seen several policies, I'm sure there are more: - "Ad-hoc" on-call with no process and you just get a phone call after hours from the boss - "Voluntary" on-call with a stipend, rotation based among a particular team - "Mandated" on-call with full over-time pay / penalty rates Are all of these now up for review? Presumably anything written in a contract takes precedence I suppose.
• 627467 2y ago
  So, before this "right" they were physically attached to their devices unable to freely decide to ignore emails? Or there was some kind of timer and expect SLA for answers that needed to be met? Or maybe because not replying under a given SLA led you to be fired? In which case my question is: is your only option to work for companies that have this culture? And you have to force all companies to behave in the same way?
  • skizm 2y ago
    I'm guessing it is something like, you can't be fired specifically for not answering outside of working hours. Nothing stopping companies from firing you for not fitting company culture (the unspoken part being company culture is we all answer calls outside of work hours). Still a step forward because there will be some careless/incompetent companies that leave a paper trail indicating they fired you for this so you can sue and get paid.
    • 627467 2y ago
      So, hiding true intentions and needs is better? Why is regulation not to force companies to be clear that you may be expected to be flexible with your corp comunication before signing the contract?
      • Vegenoid 2y ago
        > So, hiding true intentions and needs is better? No, it is illegal. Your proposed law would have the opposite effect of the law that passed: every company would include this in their employment contract and would have legal protections to make employees work overtime. In addition, there are exceptions: > To cater for emergencies and jobs with irregular hours, the rule still allows employers to contact their workers, who can only refuse to respond where it is reasonable to do so. Determining whether a refusal is reasonable will be up to Australia's industrial umpire, the Fair Work Commission (FWC), which must take into account an employee's role, personal circumstances and how and why the contact was made.
        • 2y ago
• commandlinefan 2y ago
  I mean... this is a nice thought and all, but all this means is that Australian employees now have the right to be the part of the "difficult decision to reduce our workforce in order to better align with our long term strategic objectives".
  • snapcaster 2y ago
    This doesn't end up being totally true right? Americans have MASSIVELY more labor protections than Vietnamese people but we're more productive. I don't like the assumption we can't ever improve anything for anyone because it reduces competitiveness. It's unproductive and also appears to be ahistorical when we look at other changes to labor practices over time
• space_oddity 2y ago
  When I first started working, I would respond outside of working hours, work overtime, and try to please everyone. As I got older, I developed a rule: as soon as I finish work, I just ignore all work chats, calls, and emails. Did it affect my well-being? Yes, I highly recommend it to everyone!
  • corytheboyd 2y ago
    Seriously, just don’t install (or log in to) Slack on your phone. Started doing this myself a few years ago and it has been great. I have a pager, page me if you need me. It’s just… normal to not be obsessed with work.
    • ryandrake 2y ago
      And/or: Have separate work and personal devices and never cross the streams. When I'm done working on Friday, I put my work laptop and work phone in a soundproof drawer and don't open the drawer until Monday morning. At the very least don't install work Slack on your personal phone!!
• CalRobert 2y ago
  Are people here treating emails like IM's? An email is inherently asynchronous. Why would I expect a response to an email before working hours? When did people start confusing them with synchronous communication?
  • fred_is_fred 2y ago
    Sometimes I get a random thought on a Saturday and send an email so I don’t forget. I have people on my team who view that as a “drop everything, cancel the wedding, pull the car over” level emergency. The issue is they ALL do this to themselves. They put work email on their phones, they have notifications enabled. Nobody asked them to do this, nobody asked them to read email all weekend. Even if I tell them “please ignore all weekend email”, it’s like they physically cannot do it. It’s almost an addiction.
    • glitcher 2y ago
      Help them out by scheduling the email to be sent during business hours?
      • CalRobert 2y ago
        When did this shift happen? People shouldn’t check email when they don’t want to read it.
        • glitcher 2y ago
          Often others don't behave in the same way we would or even the way we would expect. My suggestion is in the spirit of trying to offer a little help to your fellow teammates with a few extra clicks, in what seems like a very low effort compromise. I suppose it depends on your team dynamics, size, structure, etc. I work with a small, tight knit team and if I already knew someone was going to act a little neurotic with regards to a low priority weekend email, I would do the extra few clicks to make their life slightly better. In a large corporate setting maybe I would be less sympathetic, who knows.
• gwbas1c 2y ago
  > But the Australian Industry Group, an employer group, says ambiguity about how the rule applies will create confusion for bosses and workers. Jobs will become less flexible and in doing so slow the economy, it added. Whenever I encounter someone professionally who can't deal with a little ambiguity about when it's appropriate to interrupt someone; I feel like I'm working with a child trapped in an adult's body. "Children," who don't have the maturity to understand this ambiguity, shouldn't be managers. I also find that rules like this come into play because some people (cough, children stuck in adult bodies, cough) just refuse to self-regulate. It takes maturity to think through if an out-of-hours contact is appropriate; these kinds of rules only come about because of widespread immaturity in management roles.
  • InDubioProRubio 2y ago
    Some loners, cant be alone at home with themselves. After hours, they put the alpha dog away, in a little box, were nobody can be forced to play with that creature. So they call those they can torment. If somebody calls after hours, for unimportant stuff, s/he needs to be marked up for therapy and re-socialisation.
  • dathos 2y ago
    I mean interrupting is one of the harder social actions in my opinion, especially in the workplace. So much of this comes from culture, family and your personality. I say this as someone who interrupts, and loves to be interrupted. Am I a kid in an adult body, or are my norms different than yours?
    • MrDarcy 2y ago
      That depends entirely on if you ask permission before you interrupt another person.
      • dathos 2y ago
        I really don't mean to be pedantic, but that would already be interrupting someone right?
• albert_e 2y ago
  Interpreting that headline literally ... If person A is working late (maybe they started their day late, or they work from a different timezone) and send a memo during off hours of Person B ... the memo can be "ignored" by Person B even when they come back to work next day? Same for all off hours when person B is on leave - planned or otherwise?
  • CRConrad 2y ago
    What an utterly weird reading; I have a hard time seeing it as literal at all. Maybe you have your own definition of "literal"? It says they have the right to ignore them after hours. After hours is when they do the ignoring. When they're back on the clock, they stop ignoring and start reading their emails again. Including the ones sent while they were off; the headline doesn't say they have the right to ignore anything during working hours.
• sharpshadow 2y ago
  ~300 hours unpaid overtime per year and having to respond after work to emails and calls? That’s crazy. And they worry now that the economy will slow down. I think people will start to work normally now, in the previous conditions I would work much slower as a compensation.
• lemoncookiechip 2y ago
  You have the right to, and can’t be punished for it. But you can still be punished if they just say it's unrelated to it, whether through missed opportunities, increased workload, undesirable assignments, or even termination with flimsy justifications. It’s the age-old: “No one is pointing a gun at their head. They’re doing it because they want to.” -Manager XYZ I can see two ways to prevent it: 1. Ban employers from doing so with potential fees, except in cases where it's a stipulation on the contract. Although this would eventually lead to employers adding it to every contract. Not a fan of this approach. 2. You make them pay you weekend-rate overtime, this would still allow your superiors to contact you, but they would think twice. I would definitely support this, although it might not apply to all circumstances. 3. I honestly don't know, there's probably better solutions from smarter people.
  • Rygian 2y ago
    I don't know about Australia, but in my jurisdiction any illegal contractual clauses are unenforceable. If the law says "X is forbidden" and the contract says "employee agrees to do X" then the employer has no legal recourse to force employee to do X. Point 2. is the usual on-call, and it's still regulated (in my jurisdiction) by mandatory rest periods during which a person is legally mandated to not work.
• JohnMakin 2y ago
  This new-ish problem speaks to a major reason I personally prefer hybrid/on-site work cultures - there is usually a clear barrier between work/free-time, at least IME. When I'm not in the office there is very little expectation that I am working. I personally prefer this separation - when I worked a fully remote job it felt like I was being pinged at any given hour and expected to respond. This law would never happen in the united states. 0%.
• prmoustache 2y ago
  I am suprised they didn't have that right to begin with.
• qwerty456127 2y ago
  I can't believe they didn't have this right previously. I have almost always (except when I was paid specifically for being available anytime) had a habit of turning my phone off/airplane as soon as the business hours end.
• left-struck 2y ago
  As an Aussie I’m glad this is has been codified in law but I’ve personally not had any issues with people expecting me to reply outside of work hours. Then again I’ve always acted like I had this right anyway, if I were contacted outside of working hours I would just ignore it within reason. I always thought there hadn’t been much consequences but perhaps the consequence were respected boundaries…
• Yeul 2y ago
  In my country it is not unusual for people to work 36 hours. You'd imagine that a nation like Korea or Japan would be twice as rich because they work 70 hours yet it doesn't seem to go that way... Obviously if you do have a 50-70 workweek your job IS your life. Your co workers are your best friends and it doesn't matter if they call you up in the middle of the night. I have observed that in Workaholic cultures people spend a lot of time socialising with co-workers and less time on actually working. I prefer the Dutch style of "working to live". Even if that means that you have to bring your own food and eat it behind a laptop. You can socialise at home.
• guywithahat 2y ago
  [flagged]
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• ags1905 2y ago
  I need this my boss is a total bitch!