10 ms·

Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

286 points by cebert 3mo ago

yamillove 3mo ago
[flagged]
- FireBeyond 3mo ago
  "Yes, I pay you for 40 hours a week, but I expect you to be responsive the other 128. Pay you for that, why would I? The law says I don't have to." > Democrats are just unable to think about how to create the conditions for wealth generation. Oh no, business owners won't be able to "generate more wealth" for themselves. Trickle-down is already shown to be not a thing. Recent job ad in my town for a burrito restaurant, word for word: "Part time kitchen assistant wanted, up to 10-15 hours a week, $17/hr. Must have full time availability". Basically wanting someone to sit around by their phone, unable to work anywhere else, in the hopes of making ~$200 a week. Wow. That would almost pay for half of the median 1br apartment rental cost in this not particularly special town. But do go on about how us liberals are fucking the economy.
  - yamillove 3mo ago
    [flagged]
cebert 3mo ago
Direct link to the bill: https://legislature.mi.gov/Bills/Bill?ObjectName=2026-SB-0948 https://legislature.mi.gov/Bills/Bill?ObjectName=2026-SB-094...
edent 3mo ago
Android used to have an "office hours" setting which would prevent specific email accounts from notifying you outside of your specified times. I had my work GMail set to notify only between 0800 (so I could check for a "don't come in" message) and 1700 Mon-Fri. Of course, it didn't account for holidays / sick leave etc, but it was good at prevent me from panic checking every ping. I wish that was a feature on modern Gmail. Or, indeed, WhatsApp and Signal. You can manually mute, but there's no way to silence specific notifications at specific times. Regardless, employees shouldn't be expecting employees to be on-call without compensation. But users also need ways to manage this themselves.
- throe9393i44i 3mo ago
  Second phone?
  - pwg 3mo ago
    Indeed. If $job is not willing to buy and hand me a "work phone" then they are out of luck, nothing for $job gets put onto my private phone. If they think they need this ability, then they also need to add a line item to their budgets for the cost of the phone and the service. And when faced with this alternative, they have not, so far, decided they want to pay for a phone.
    - SoftTalker 3mo ago
      Where do you draw the line? If the employer wants you to install a 2FA app on your phone, do you demand a separate phone or alternate 2FA device for that and mark yourself as a troublemaker? Or do you just do what 99.8% of the staff does and install the app?
      - nosioptar 3mo ago
        I'm happy to be the "troublemaker". In my experience, one troublemaker can often recruit others to their cause.
        gruez 3mo ago
        >In my experience, one troublemaker can often recruit others to their cause. Maybe if your company is filled with the type of people who run archlinux on their IBM era thinkpads, but otherwise I would be very surprised if could find even one or two sympathetic people who are also against installing a 2fa app. Even if you can get your manager to cave, it'll be less because they want to be "troublemakers" themselves, and more because they don't to deal with the hassle of arguing with you.
        nosioptar 3mo ago
roenxi 3mo ago
[flagged]
- awinter-py 3mo ago
  a major function of the law is to mediate between groups that have unequal power as a collective, employees out-vote employers and can obtain this kind of concession through the law but not in an individual contract negotiation (mancur olson notwithstanding) taken to its logical extreme your argument would forbid all group negotiations, I'd think?
  - roenxi 3mo ago
    I'm just going off the summary document [0], but the law doesn't seem to require any particular working hours. It just says people should stick to them once they've been agreed. That's already implied by having working hours. The whole bill basically just tells the regulator that the legislature thinks the fine for not sticking to the employment contract should be up to $500 which is probably redundant since I assume the regulator (or someone, at any rate) can already fine people who don't stick to contracts. And they shouldn't need special and specific powers to fine someone for particular employment contract violations, if they're going to have power they should have general powers. > taken to its logical extreme your argument would forbid all group negotiations, I'd think? I don't see how the bill or anything I wrote have anything to do with group negotiations. People can negotiate as a group for all I care, as long as I can negotiate on my own. [0] https://legislature.mi.gov/documents/2025-2026/billanalysis/Senate/htm/2026-SFA-0948-G.htm https://legislature.mi.gov/documents/2025-2026/billanalysis/...
    - Arainach 3mo ago
      > I assume the regulator (or someone, at any rate) can already fine people who don't stick to contracts ....what contract? There's no contract in most cases and contracts that exist very rarely define hours. I've never encountered one that did. > seem to require any particular working hours This isn't about enforcing hours, it's about communication during hours you're not being paid for.
headz 3mo ago
It kind of baffles me that this needs to be a bill. I guess I'm lucky that I've never worked for a company that required me to be constantly online. (I work remotely for a US company, work European working hours, and nobody requires me to be online outside of them.)
- geetee 3mo ago
  I've worked at companies that don't outright require it, but they utilize a few workaholic employees to set an expectation sane people can't live up to. It creates a stressful environment where expectations are unclear. Combine that with the current job market and you effectively hold your employees hostage.
  - jackfischer 3mo ago
    Ultimately companies don't exist for the employees they exist to deliver something to the customers that rely on you. Stress and uncertainty are part of work and life. Why should that come before the people you're serving?
    - geetee 3mo ago
      Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?
- toomuchtodo 3mo ago
  You are lucky. This bill is for the unlucky, because luck is not a strategy as it relates to labor rights and protections.
  - headz 3mo ago
    Yeah, now I see that my message came out a bit differently than I wanted it to. What I wanted to say is that it sucks this needs to be a law instead of just being common sense.
    - 3mo ago
ElProlactin 3mo ago
While I don't disagree with the intent, the reality is that workers are already at a significant disadvantage and many don't feel they have the leverage to be more firm about boundaries (with most of them feeling this way being correct about their lack of leverage). Laws like this will just encourage workarounds (like moving work to jurisdictions where such laws don't exist) and, eventually and wherever possible, elimination of positions (AI).
- cadamsdotcom 3mo ago
  While I understand how you can see it this way, laws like this have worked in many other places (yes some of those were places where employers had fewer options to move interstate, but that’s a costly thing to do for employers) It does actually work - think of it like a speed limit. If everyone is forced to go at a certain maximum speed (ie. the same max no. of contact hours per week per employee) then it’s not a (relative) loss if a business can’t operate at “full capacity” for more hours than its competitors.
  - ElProlactin 3mo ago
    I won't say that laws like this can't have any impact, but it's a global marketplace and change is constant. Executive/virtual assistants, travel coordinators, bookkeepers, cold callers, real estate transaction coordinators, social media marketing managers, medical transcriptionists and billers, customer service reps, medical records analysis, architectural drafting, video editors, etc. Many Americans used to be able to earn decent wages working in these roles. Now, it's much harder and there's much less opportunity. A ton of these roles are now filled by freelancers/contractors in places like the Philippines. Obviously, this didn't happen just because of US labor laws. Wages are the big driver. But laws like this do in some cases give businesses reason to look at places where wages are lower and employees are more "flexible". It's easy for tech people who feel secure in 6-figure/year jobs to scoff at this but go and talk to someone who used to work in these types of roles how life has been over the past decade.
Havoc 3mo ago
Maybe I just have abnormal leverage but I've never had after hours coms be an issue. I've had two phone for basically all my working life and just don't look at it outside of work hours. Don't think I've ever been challenged on why are you not reading after hour messages. Everyone around me is professional enough to know that its a discussion that would go poorly.
- tough 3mo ago
  You probably have been just lucky with your bosses? Slack also works on weekends and at the AM
- cmatta 3mo ago
  This is a pretty self-selecting group, so I'm not surprised that most people reading this don't have a problem with after-hours coms. If you've ever worked in hospitality or retail, you'll know that managers will call/contact you at all hours to make sure they have coverage. It's irritating.
  - yamillove 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - shimman 3mo ago
      Telling people they should get a better job implies that there is work where YOU think the workers deserve to be taken advantage of. Why IDK, guessing you hate people fighting for better quality of life through democratic norms. People rightfully hating tech workers nowadays makes so much sense.
      - yamillove 3mo ago
        [flagged]
  - tbrownaw 3mo ago
    > If you've ever worked in hospitality or retail, you'll know that managers will call/contact you at all hours to make sure they have coverage. It's irritating. I vaguely remember a few years ago there was some news pushing new scheduling software that was supposed to help make schedules more predictable, and how it wasn't working to full potential because store managers wouldn't trust it. But I don't think the bill in question here would actually do anything to affect that issue?
nickjj 3mo ago
I'm curious, how often are people getting contacted outside of work hours for "regular" jobs? I do SRE / Platform type of work where I'm technically on-call 24/7/365 but as a salaried worker I don't receive over time or anything like that. If an on-call event happens where I end up putting in 2 hours on a Saturday or Thursday night, I'd use my discretion to leave early or start late another day. In the roles where on-call was an expectation, it was focused to critical downtime events, not to answer a Slack message from someone working in a different time zone or non-standard schedule. I don't even have work Slack or email on my personal phone. If PagerDuty goes off from a critical alert I get called, that's the only way I get contacted outside of normal hours.
- cadamsdotcom 3mo ago
  You are lucky in that you don’t have the type of employer who needs to be reined in via the law. There are some true scumbags out there.
- BoxFour 3mo ago
  It's incredibly common in retail/food service/hopsitality/etc. Usually about covering shifts.
  - Spooky23 3mo ago
    Yeah, it’s basically cheap operators pushing problems down. My wife was in this business, and worked for a company that gave them full control. Basically they paid like $2-3/hr (15-25%) more and fired people who called out twice. Their turnover and shrink was like half of the norm and it was a really successful business. Low turnover is a big deal in that business. Transient employees pilfer like crazy and fuck up more. You yield a good ROI on shrink with smarter labor. A fucked up preparation or stolen cold cut ham can cost a weeks labor.
- Aurornis 3mo ago
  > I'm curious, how often are people getting contacted outside of work hours for "regular" jobs? It’s all over the place. Most of my jobs wouldn’t intentionally contact someone after hours or on weekends unless it was a real emergency or urgency that couldn’t be avoided. I did work for one company with an executive who liked to work odd hours and demanded responsiveness from everyone. Got so bad that he would regularly be unavailable during the workweek daytime hours but would start tagging people in Slack on Sunday morning or at 9PM. He would threaten to fire people who weren’t responsive enough and I once got threatened for not responding fast enough on vacation. As you might expect, turnover was very high for that company. More generally there is a problem with people not understanding how communication tools like Slack should be used. I’ve had to teach a lot of non-technical people how to disable push notifications for every message in Slack. They would install the app and start receiving push messages for everything said in all of their channels, then they would think that meant they had to respond to it. You have to set some expectations and communicate what’s expected, otherwise some people will assume every message that appears on their phone is something that needs acknowledgement right away.
tbrownaw 3mo ago
How would this interact with existing rules around exempt / non-exempt (roughly, salaried vs hourly) employees? I would think it would already be expensive to make someone paid by the hour do extra work stuff during time they're not already being paid for.
- tptacek 3mo ago
  It doesn't. As drafted it applies to exempt employees. (It's just a proposed bill; it's unlikely to happen and if it picked up any steam presumably it would be drafted more carefully.)
marsninja 3mo ago
Hot take: The reality is unless this becomes a ban on after hours coms (which likely isn't feasible), economic incentives will prevail. Folks that are less available, less engaged, and in less communication will be darwin'd out. Only question, is this good for employees, and bad for employers, or the other way around? Creating new ways folks can "get ahead" that is non-obvious (or worse non-official) can lead to issues.
geor9e 3mo ago
it's spelled "comms" although that is still jargon and the actual headline is "contact"
- cebert 3mo ago
  HN has a restriction on title length. I had to shorten the title somewhere. I’m curious what you would have shortened instead of just being snarky.
  - geor9e 3mo ago
    your title was 2 characters under the limit and i genuinely didn't know what "coms" meant until i clicked thru
theptip 3mo ago
This seems mostly good for restaurants, some concerns I had from the title seem to be handled reasonably. It’s not preventing “can anyone cover Saturday” messages in a group chat. Just the case where shift changes are made and workers are _required_ to work outside their contracted hours. Seems this would fit with what good food service employers do, would put pressure on the more abusive fast food chains. Maybe the flexible shift is more important than I credit though? Unless I’m missing something it would ban the standard startup model for oncall, meaning Michigan would be made (even more) unattractive for tech startups. Unless we just re-comp everyone to include an SRE stipend as part of the contracted salary package? Unsure if that could work, maybe? SWE is typically well over minimum wage so maybe this just nets out the same?
- swiftcoder 3mo ago
  It only bans uncontracted oncall. If your job description includes on call responsibilities (and compensates for them appropriately), it doesn’t appear that would be a problem?
  - theptip 3mo ago
    This seems to be the crux, I couldn’t find a place where the bill explicitly says, so AIUI the rule making could fall either way. Are you “compensated for being oncall” if your contract says you may do some unspecified amount of oncall, and your pay doesn’t change if you do or don’t? You could imagine a judge / regulator deciding either way right?
    - swiftcoder 3mo ago
      Making companies spell this out explicitly in their contracts seems like a reasonable improvement to me
- connicpu 3mo ago
  If you make over $130k then you make enough that you can be worked 24/7 without violating a $15 minimum wage + 1.5x over 40 hours per week.
tlogan 3mo ago
[flagged]
- toomuchtodo 3mo ago
  Would’ve been better to spend that $1.8B on public services and forgo the 600 jobs. Lesson learned. US population and working age population will continue to decline into the future due to structural demographics. As labor supply declines, it’s an ideal time to work towards improved labor rights over the next several decades. Deaths outnumber births in ~21 states as of this comment, and will come for all states eventually. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680794 (citations) 69% of US employers report difficulty finding talent - https://www.staffingindustry.com/news/global-daily-news/69-of-us-employers-report-difficulty-finding-talent https://www.staffingindustry.com/news/global-daily-news/69-o... - March 18th, 2026 (“Talent scarcity has become a structural challenge for American employers,” Ger Doyle, regional president at Manpower North America, said in a press release. “With demand for skilled workers consistently outpacing supply, businesses need to rethink how they attract, develop, and retain talent.”) The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments) Dependency and depopulation? Confronting the consequences of a new demographic reality - https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-depopulation-confronting-the-consequences-of-a-new-demographic-reality https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-dep... - January 15th, 2025 (think in systems)
- nitwit005 3mo ago
  You have no opinion about the bill, but then clearly imply it'll be bad. Sure.
  - tlogan 3mo ago
    Meaning, it creates one more hurdle for businesses. I think that is an objective statement. Is it bad? That depends on your point of view. If you are pro-business, then yes, the bill is bad. If you are not pro-business and you are pro-worker rights, then you will not see it as bad.
quadrifoliate 3mo ago
Lots of privilege in this thread showing. This is the equivalent of "what global warming, it was so cold today". Please remember that just because you aren't expected to have consistent unpaid after-hours comms doesn't mean that others don't. Bills like this would help a lot of people who are victims of "can you just take a look at this real quick" at 6pm. It does need to be at the country level though, otherwise employers will just play off states against each other.
- nfw2 3mo ago
  Most of the roles I've had involved irregular and long hours. In most cases, I've been happy to take these roles. The article isn't clear how exactly this is intended to work. I think no surprise hours that aren't recognized in the terms of employment makes sense. But also I think I should be able to agree to being available if I am willing to be. Remote Michigan tech workers already have enough trouble as tech companies insist on returning to office.
  - idiotsecant 3mo ago
    This is simple. You're on call, you're paid to be on call. Anyone accepting anything different is encouraging this behaviour. Unionize and this goes away.
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
  - preg_match 3mo ago
    If long and irregular hours are expected, then those hours should be tracked and paid out at a rate. Companies absolutely abuse salary exemptions and it’s getting ridiculous. If you have to “clock in” at the exact same time every day, “clock out” at the exact same time every day, and are expected to work additional scheduled hours outside of work, you should be paid hourly and receive overtime. You are an hourly employee. Not a salary one. You might be called a salary employee. But no, you’re working as an hourly employee. If companies expect you to be on call, that’s great. Pay an on call hourly rate. Problem solved. But you can’t just take a salary employee, treat them like they work at McDonald’s and then pay a base bi weekly salary. That’s not okay IMO.
cactusplant7374 3mo ago
Michigan is becoming poorer relative to its neighboring states. Maybe not the right time for this?
al_borland 3mo ago
Where I work, in Michigan, people used to be compensated if they were called for on-call work. Then, probably 15 years ago, they decided to give everyone a little raise, based on how much on-call work they did in the previous year, then ended the extra payment for on-call. Anyone who was hired for, or moved into, a position that required on-call work got nothing and continues to get nothing. I used to get called a lot, when my boss also ran the critical incident team. These days, I don’t get called much, the there is always a looming threat. I miss the days when being done with work meant that I was actually done with work.
- sokoloff 3mo ago
  > Then, probably 15 years ago, they decided to give everyone a little raise, based on how much on-call work they did in the previous year, then ended the extra payment for on-call. Anyone who was hired for, or moved into, a position that required on-call work got nothing and continues to get nothing. If Alex was previously on-call from time to time and got a raise to account for that typical amount of on-call, it sounds like you think that's fair? (It does sound fair to me.) Then, Bailey is hired at the same exact pay as Alex and also has to occasionally be on-call. Is Bailey truly "getting nothing"? Is Alex's pay fair and Bailey's identical pay unfair? I don't think so. If you want to pass a law that requires employers to divide up pay differently than they currently do, that's totally fine; in some corner cases, it will result in a net pay increase for lower-paid employees.
  - al_borland 3mo ago
    Over 15 years it all gets lost. When they made the change, I was on a team that didn’t do on-call, because we were 24x7, so our pay remained the same. Eventually I got a new role, also without on-call. One day the boss thought it would be a good idea if we start doing on-call support. There was no pay adjustment for this, no new job I applied for where on-call was part of the deal I signed up for. It just happened. It could be called an edge case, but when the on-call pay is built into the base salary, it creates the expectation that a person is never off the clock and no time is truly their own. It also removes the incentive to minimize on-call work.
roughly 3mo ago
There's a weird incuriosity in the responses here for a place that calls itself Hacker News. "This doesn't happen to me" is about the least interesting or useful response you could have to someone telling you something happens to them. Someone is telling you the world works differently for them than it does for you, which means you've got an opportunity to learn something new about the world and expand your model. Every good hack comes from understanding the world well enough to see the hack in the first place - someone telling you about their lived experience of the world is a gift.
- tbrownaw 3mo ago
  > Someone is telling you the world works differently for them than it does for you, which means you've got an opportunity to learn something new about the world and expand your model. ...than it does for you, which means there's an opportunity for someone to expend resources verifying and characterizing the claimed difference.
  - darth_avocado 3mo ago
    It’s easy to dismiss something by saying “it’s not been my experience”. It would be a huge waste of time if every such claim requires expending resources verifying and characterizing the difference. There should be a higher bar for discourse on HN.
    - tbrownaw 3mo ago
      The comment I was replying to appears to be a call for unquestioning belief. Which is the far extreme in the opposite direction.
      - grayhatter 3mo ago
        No, it doesn't, or at the very least, that wasn't my read and I don't think that's a reasonable interpretation. The comment starts with the topic, shock at the lack of curiosity from a group happy to comment in the theme of news interesting to hackers, and concludes with an argument that someone sharing their life/experience is something valuable. IMO, the only reasonable argument one could take, is that roughly believes hackers should be curious, and that if you want to treat humans with the respect they deserve as individuals, you should default to trying to believe what they say, listening when they try to communicate, and avoid ignoring what they're trying to communicate just so you can interject something unrelated about yourself. I not only agree, but I'm glad someone took a moment to encourage treating others with respect.
throwaway85825 3mo ago
Companies that desire on call need to be willing to pay an hourly rate for 24 hours of possible labor.
- gblargg 3mo ago
  At least an ongoing retainer fee, plus paying for time spent dealing with comms.
  - throwaway85825 3mo ago
    Lots of in office people aren't doing work 100% of the time, they still get paid because they could be asked to do something. Same goes for on call, just with a flipped percentage. Further for non fixed work schedules any shifts that aren't scheduled two weeks in advance should be paid overtime.
    - shimman 3mo ago
      Why is the onus on workers to make sure they are working 100.00% of the time? It's not their company, they aren't management. If you want them to cosplay as managers maybe pay them as such rather than trying to pit them amongst each other.
      - genewitch 3mo ago
        i can't figure out what some of the commentary here is borne from. "you're not working 100% of the time so it's ok if they ask you to work outside of normal hours" is sadistic.
        gblargg 3mo ago
        I took parent to be arguing that because people get paid at the office even though they aren't working 100% of the time, the same logic would dictate being paid when not at the office. The percentage flip would just mean that they aren't 100% doing leisure activities.
gblargg 3mo ago
I'm fine if they want to give me extra work when I'm not on the job. I round up to the hour, so choose your after-hours emails wisely.
yamillove 3mo ago
One thing I wonder is how will this politician work an after hours meeting with the citizens. Will she not show up or will she tell her constituents that THEY need to do the meeting at HER working hours?
- galleywest200 3mo ago
  Citizens are not employees of politicians. Only the politician’s staffers are. Arguably the politician works for us so we can decide their working hours.
  - yamillove 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago
      I think that you might have an easier time in the rest of your life if you start considering, among other things, the concept of "figure of speech."
      - yamillove 3mo ago
        Thanks
hintymad 3mo ago
That means tech companies won't hire engineers in Michigan if they are required to be oncall, as many such engineers rotate their oncall schedules?
lpolovets 3mo ago
I think stuff like this is much better settled with compensation than legislation. For example when I was an engineer 15-20 years ago, my friends would deprioritize jobs with lots of on-call needs, but would still take the jobs if they were exceptional in some way or the comp was especially good. Why can't we do that in most other job categories as well? I can think of a bunch of areas where this kind of bill would degrade people's experiences with businesses: - handoffs will suck. Someone's shift ends at 2pm and you take over. At 2:05 you realize you need to ask them if a client issue got resolved or if they did some important item on their task list. But now you're not allowed to. Lots of time will get wasted as a result. - scheduling will get slower. This would impact founders if it was in California! For example VC firms (like mine) have executive assistants, and the expectation is something like "work 7-8 hours a day, and check email a few times in the evening in case something pressing comes up." But if you can't ask your EA to do a quick email check a few times in the evening, the thing that could've been scheduled today for tomorrow will instead be scheduled tomorrow for the future. - if businesses need to hire more just to have a little more around the clock coverage, then prices go up for everyone. E.g. if 5% of work happens unpredictably between 5pm and 10pm, then either that work can get ignored until the next day (previous points), or someone can be hired to work 5pm-10pm -- but eventually that extra cost gets passed down to customers.
- functionmouse 3mo ago
  > I think stuff like this is much better settled with compensation than legislation. The only reason we get compensated at all is because of legislation. They'll pay us as little and work us as hard as they're legally and physically able to.
  - matchbok3 3mo ago
    In exactly 0 of my hiring decisions, ever, was legislation a reason why someone is paid.
- beAbU 3mo ago
  The very first paragraph in TFA says: > ... rules on when and for what reason an employer could contact an employee outside of a normal work schedule. This is no blanket 'thou shalt not call thy employees after hours' law. All this is doing is preventing employers from effectively pulling a bait and switch, by implicitly expecting employees to be available 24/7 for whatever reason. If you've ever been in a situation where your boss just fucking calls you because of some asinine reason ("hey I just had an idea...) then you know how terrible it is. Nothing spoilt my weekends as much as a boss calling and I'm thinking "o shit prod is down" or whatever, and then it's just him asking on a delivery date for a feature because he's having drinks with the client now and they were asking. Now, if there is a requirement for after hours availability, it has to be stated in the contract, and the compensation must accordingly reflect this additional requirement. I think it's great this is happening.
giancarlostoro 3mo ago
How do bills like these work for jobs where you are literally on call for outages?
- ThrowawayTestr 3mo ago
  Then you're on the clock and by definition not after (your) hours.
oatmeal1 3mo ago
> But in general, should this bill become law in Michigan, an employer could not require an employee to access or respond to work-related matters outside of their assigned hours... Violations could be reported to the state's Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, with fines to the company and/or overtime pay to the employee among the possible results. It will be too easy for employers to say to the DOL the employee was not actually required to respond to the work-related matter when they told the employee they are expected to. Laws like these don't solve problems (bargaining power disparity caused by a variety of factors), they solve symptoms. It may not have a significant effect.
nunez 3mo ago
Getting a separate phone and phone number for work has been one of the biggest quality of life improvements for my work life balance. It's a small change in the macro, but doing this enabled me to (a) choose the device I want, (b) keep work stuff off of my personal phone, and, most importantly, (c) COMPLETELY disconnect from work when the day is done. This became necessary after COVID induced WFH forced work into the home and expectations around being "on" all of the time became more pervasive. That said, "Work Profile" is one of Android's best features, and I'd love for iOS to have something equivalent. It's not as good as a physical separation, but it's the next best thing.
- elevation 3mo ago
  A friend with an iPhone runs his a couple businesses with the Quo app (nee OpenPhone) which allows him to manage calls/sms for multiple business numbers from his personal phone while allowing him to automatically disable ringing after 5pm when he leaves the office to be a family man. My problem is that my customers prefer to reach me over iMessage, and porting my number to any "business phone in an app" means I'd be downgrading to unreliable SMS in a green bubble. So if I want to separate work/personal use, I'd need to carry a second iPhone.
_DeadFred_ 3mo ago
I want a bill that prevents employees from using their phones at all for work cases. I've seen people who can barely afford their smart phone having to use it for work and then dropping it/breaking it where replacing it is a weeks salary. Companies should be required to provide the tools needed, and that should include phone if a phone app is required to be used as part of the job. I'd say a replacement guarantee could work, but these sorts of places will fire someone if they requested such a guaranty be fulfilled so the only way is total ban.
SE5pc3JhY2lzdA 3mo ago
I suppose if the position requires it, like being on call, companies will just avoid Michigan workers and either out source, or hire remotely in another state. I'm originally from Michigan and have worked at lots of different jobs. I rarely ever was required to respond after hours, and if I did, it was part of my job (and explained to me in detail when I accepted the position). Does this apply to Doctors and Nurses?
bob1029 3mo ago
I've worked for more than one small company that has an unstated policy to not hire employees who live in CA or NY. It sounds like MI might wind up on that list. I know of certain employees who reside in that state right now who are pulling ridiculous hours just to keep the business alive. None of them were forced into it or are otherwise unhappy with the circumstances they find themselves in. I've had many opportunities to re-enter the W2 labor pool and decided to stay out in the high seas. Many moons ago, when I signed up to work at Samsung Austin Semiconductor they told me I might be responsible for odd hours. I agreed to this and had a pager strapped to my body until the day I quit the job 3 years later. No one seems to get weird about a doctor-style pager ripping employees out of slumber at 2am. The only time I got a break from the pager is when I was on a 777 on my way to South Korea. Then I got a new kind of pager when I arrived. Somehow teams messages and outlook are super evil by comparison to this.
whatever1 3mo ago
In America the definition of at will employment is so broad that employee exploitation is not covered. Technically you sign you will work at least 40 hours per week. So 120 hours is fine by the law. And if you die at work, hey it was your choice. Now on the opposite side, I also understand that there can be a handful of cases in a year where you really need to work outside the work hours, law should not be making businesses so inflexible that they are doomed to fail.

286 points by cebert 3mo ago

yamillove 3mo ago

[flagged]

FireBeyond 3mo ago
"Yes, I pay you for 40 hours a week, but I expect you to be responsive the other 128. Pay you for that, why would I? The law says I don't have to." > Democrats are just unable to think about how to create the conditions for wealth generation. Oh no, business owners won't be able to "generate more wealth" for themselves. Trickle-down is already shown to be not a thing. Recent job ad in my town for a burrito restaurant, word for word: "Part time kitchen assistant wanted, up to 10-15 hours a week, $17/hr. Must have full time availability". Basically wanting someone to sit around by their phone, unable to work anywhere else, in the hopes of making ~$200 a week. Wow. That would almost pay for half of the median 1br apartment rental cost in this not particularly special town. But do go on about how us liberals are fucking the economy.
- yamillove 3mo ago
  [flagged]

cebert 3mo ago

Direct link to the bill: https://legislature.mi.gov/Bills/Bill?ObjectName=2026-SB-0948 https://legislature.mi.gov/Bills/Bill?ObjectName=2026-SB-094...

edent 3mo ago

Android used to have an "office hours" setting which would prevent specific email accounts from notifying you outside of your specified times. I had my work GMail set to notify only between 0800 (so I could check for a "don't come in" message) and 1700 Mon-Fri. Of course, it didn't account for holidays / sick leave etc, but it was good at prevent me from panic checking every ping. I wish that was a feature on modern Gmail. Or, indeed, WhatsApp and Signal. You can manually mute, but there's no way to silence specific notifications at specific times. Regardless, employees shouldn't be expecting employees to be on-call without compensation. But users also need ways to manage this themselves.

throe9393i44i 3mo ago
Second phone?
- pwg 3mo ago
  Indeed. If $job is not willing to buy and hand me a "work phone" then they are out of luck, nothing for $job gets put onto my private phone. If they think they need this ability, then they also need to add a line item to their budgets for the cost of the phone and the service. And when faced with this alternative, they have not, so far, decided they want to pay for a phone.
  - SoftTalker 3mo ago
    Where do you draw the line? If the employer wants you to install a 2FA app on your phone, do you demand a separate phone or alternate 2FA device for that and mark yourself as a troublemaker? Or do you just do what 99.8% of the staff does and install the app?
    - nosioptar 3mo ago
      I'm happy to be the "troublemaker". In my experience, one troublemaker can often recruit others to their cause.
      - gruez 3mo ago
        >In my experience, one troublemaker can often recruit others to their cause. Maybe if your company is filled with the type of people who run archlinux on their IBM era thinkpads, but otherwise I would be very surprised if could find even one or two sympathetic people who are also against installing a 2fa app. Even if you can get your manager to cave, it'll be less because they want to be "troublemakers" themselves, and more because they don't to deal with the hassle of arguing with you.
        nosioptar 3mo ago

roenxi 3mo ago

[flagged]

awinter-py 3mo ago
a major function of the law is to mediate between groups that have unequal power as a collective, employees out-vote employers and can obtain this kind of concession through the law but not in an individual contract negotiation (mancur olson notwithstanding) taken to its logical extreme your argument would forbid all group negotiations, I'd think?
- roenxi 3mo ago
  I'm just going off the summary document [0], but the law doesn't seem to require any particular working hours. It just says people should stick to them once they've been agreed. That's already implied by having working hours. The whole bill basically just tells the regulator that the legislature thinks the fine for not sticking to the employment contract should be up to $500 which is probably redundant since I assume the regulator (or someone, at any rate) can already fine people who don't stick to contracts. And they shouldn't need special and specific powers to fine someone for particular employment contract violations, if they're going to have power they should have general powers. > taken to its logical extreme your argument would forbid all group negotiations, I'd think? I don't see how the bill or anything I wrote have anything to do with group negotiations. People can negotiate as a group for all I care, as long as I can negotiate on my own. [0] https://legislature.mi.gov/documents/2025-2026/billanalysis/Senate/htm/2026-SFA-0948-G.htm https://legislature.mi.gov/documents/2025-2026/billanalysis/...
  - Arainach 3mo ago
    > I assume the regulator (or someone, at any rate) can already fine people who don't stick to contracts ....what contract? There's no contract in most cases and contracts that exist very rarely define hours. I've never encountered one that did. > seem to require any particular working hours This isn't about enforcing hours, it's about communication during hours you're not being paid for.

headz 3mo ago

It kind of baffles me that this needs to be a bill. I guess I'm lucky that I've never worked for a company that required me to be constantly online. (I work remotely for a US company, work European working hours, and nobody requires me to be online outside of them.)

geetee 3mo ago
I've worked at companies that don't outright require it, but they utilize a few workaholic employees to set an expectation sane people can't live up to. It creates a stressful environment where expectations are unclear. Combine that with the current job market and you effectively hold your employees hostage.
- jackfischer 3mo ago
  Ultimately companies don't exist for the employees they exist to deliver something to the customers that rely on you. Stress and uncertainty are part of work and life. Why should that come before the people you're serving?
  - geetee 3mo ago
    Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?
toomuchtodo 3mo ago
You are lucky. This bill is for the unlucky, because luck is not a strategy as it relates to labor rights and protections.
- headz 3mo ago
  Yeah, now I see that my message came out a bit differently than I wanted it to. What I wanted to say is that it sucks this needs to be a law instead of just being common sense.
  - 3mo ago

ElProlactin 3mo ago

While I don't disagree with the intent, the reality is that workers are already at a significant disadvantage and many don't feel they have the leverage to be more firm about boundaries (with most of them feeling this way being correct about their lack of leverage). Laws like this will just encourage workarounds (like moving work to jurisdictions where such laws don't exist) and, eventually and wherever possible, elimination of positions (AI).

cadamsdotcom 3mo ago
While I understand how you can see it this way, laws like this have worked in many other places (yes some of those were places where employers had fewer options to move interstate, but that’s a costly thing to do for employers) It does actually work - think of it like a speed limit. If everyone is forced to go at a certain maximum speed (ie. the same max no. of contact hours per week per employee) then it’s not a (relative) loss if a business can’t operate at “full capacity” for more hours than its competitors.
- ElProlactin 3mo ago
  I won't say that laws like this can't have any impact, but it's a global marketplace and change is constant. Executive/virtual assistants, travel coordinators, bookkeepers, cold callers, real estate transaction coordinators, social media marketing managers, medical transcriptionists and billers, customer service reps, medical records analysis, architectural drafting, video editors, etc. Many Americans used to be able to earn decent wages working in these roles. Now, it's much harder and there's much less opportunity. A ton of these roles are now filled by freelancers/contractors in places like the Philippines. Obviously, this didn't happen just because of US labor laws. Wages are the big driver. But laws like this do in some cases give businesses reason to look at places where wages are lower and employees are more "flexible". It's easy for tech people who feel secure in 6-figure/year jobs to scoff at this but go and talk to someone who used to work in these types of roles how life has been over the past decade.

Havoc 3mo ago

Maybe I just have abnormal leverage but I've never had after hours coms be an issue. I've had two phone for basically all my working life and just don't look at it outside of work hours. Don't think I've ever been challenged on why are you not reading after hour messages. Everyone around me is professional enough to know that its a discussion that would go poorly.

tough 3mo ago
You probably have been just lucky with your bosses? Slack also works on weekends and at the AM
cmatta 3mo ago
This is a pretty self-selecting group, so I'm not surprised that most people reading this don't have a problem with after-hours coms. If you've ever worked in hospitality or retail, you'll know that managers will call/contact you at all hours to make sure they have coverage. It's irritating.
- yamillove 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - shimman 3mo ago
    Telling people they should get a better job implies that there is work where YOU think the workers deserve to be taken advantage of. Why IDK, guessing you hate people fighting for better quality of life through democratic norms. People rightfully hating tech workers nowadays makes so much sense.
    - yamillove 3mo ago
      [flagged]
- tbrownaw 3mo ago
  > If you've ever worked in hospitality or retail, you'll know that managers will call/contact you at all hours to make sure they have coverage. It's irritating. I vaguely remember a few years ago there was some news pushing new scheduling software that was supposed to help make schedules more predictable, and how it wasn't working to full potential because store managers wouldn't trust it. But I don't think the bill in question here would actually do anything to affect that issue?

nickjj 3mo ago

I'm curious, how often are people getting contacted outside of work hours for "regular" jobs? I do SRE / Platform type of work where I'm technically on-call 24/7/365 but as a salaried worker I don't receive over time or anything like that. If an on-call event happens where I end up putting in 2 hours on a Saturday or Thursday night, I'd use my discretion to leave early or start late another day. In the roles where on-call was an expectation, it was focused to critical downtime events, not to answer a Slack message from someone working in a different time zone or non-standard schedule. I don't even have work Slack or email on my personal phone. If PagerDuty goes off from a critical alert I get called, that's the only way I get contacted outside of normal hours.

cadamsdotcom 3mo ago
You are lucky in that you don’t have the type of employer who needs to be reined in via the law. There are some true scumbags out there.
BoxFour 3mo ago
It's incredibly common in retail/food service/hopsitality/etc. Usually about covering shifts.
- Spooky23 3mo ago
  Yeah, it’s basically cheap operators pushing problems down. My wife was in this business, and worked for a company that gave them full control. Basically they paid like $2-3/hr (15-25%) more and fired people who called out twice. Their turnover and shrink was like half of the norm and it was a really successful business. Low turnover is a big deal in that business. Transient employees pilfer like crazy and fuck up more. You yield a good ROI on shrink with smarter labor. A fucked up preparation or stolen cold cut ham can cost a weeks labor.
Aurornis 3mo ago
> I'm curious, how often are people getting contacted outside of work hours for "regular" jobs? It’s all over the place. Most of my jobs wouldn’t intentionally contact someone after hours or on weekends unless it was a real emergency or urgency that couldn’t be avoided. I did work for one company with an executive who liked to work odd hours and demanded responsiveness from everyone. Got so bad that he would regularly be unavailable during the workweek daytime hours but would start tagging people in Slack on Sunday morning or at 9PM. He would threaten to fire people who weren’t responsive enough and I once got threatened for not responding fast enough on vacation. As you might expect, turnover was very high for that company. More generally there is a problem with people not understanding how communication tools like Slack should be used. I’ve had to teach a lot of non-technical people how to disable push notifications for every message in Slack. They would install the app and start receiving push messages for everything said in all of their channels, then they would think that meant they had to respond to it. You have to set some expectations and communicate what’s expected, otherwise some people will assume every message that appears on their phone is something that needs acknowledgement right away.

tbrownaw 3mo ago

How would this interact with existing rules around exempt / non-exempt (roughly, salaried vs hourly) employees? I would think it would already be expensive to make someone paid by the hour do extra work stuff during time they're not already being paid for.

tptacek 3mo ago
It doesn't. As drafted it applies to exempt employees. (It's just a proposed bill; it's unlikely to happen and if it picked up any steam presumably it would be drafted more carefully.)

marsninja 3mo ago

Hot take: The reality is unless this becomes a ban on after hours coms (which likely isn't feasible), economic incentives will prevail. Folks that are less available, less engaged, and in less communication will be darwin'd out. Only question, is this good for employees, and bad for employers, or the other way around? Creating new ways folks can "get ahead" that is non-obvious (or worse non-official) can lead to issues.

geor9e 3mo ago

it's spelled "comms" although that is still jargon and the actual headline is "contact"

cebert 3mo ago
HN has a restriction on title length. I had to shorten the title somewhere. I’m curious what you would have shortened instead of just being snarky.
- geor9e 3mo ago
  your title was 2 characters under the limit and i genuinely didn't know what "coms" meant until i clicked thru

theptip 3mo ago

This seems mostly good for restaurants, some concerns I had from the title seem to be handled reasonably. It’s not preventing “can anyone cover Saturday” messages in a group chat. Just the case where shift changes are made and workers are _required_ to work outside their contracted hours. Seems this would fit with what good food service employers do, would put pressure on the more abusive fast food chains. Maybe the flexible shift is more important than I credit though? Unless I’m missing something it would ban the standard startup model for oncall, meaning Michigan would be made (even more) unattractive for tech startups. Unless we just re-comp everyone to include an SRE stipend as part of the contracted salary package? Unsure if that could work, maybe? SWE is typically well over minimum wage so maybe this just nets out the same?

swiftcoder 3mo ago
It only bans uncontracted oncall. If your job description includes on call responsibilities (and compensates for them appropriately), it doesn’t appear that would be a problem?
- theptip 3mo ago
  This seems to be the crux, I couldn’t find a place where the bill explicitly says, so AIUI the rule making could fall either way. Are you “compensated for being oncall” if your contract says you may do some unspecified amount of oncall, and your pay doesn’t change if you do or don’t? You could imagine a judge / regulator deciding either way right?
  - swiftcoder 3mo ago
    Making companies spell this out explicitly in their contracts seems like a reasonable improvement to me
connicpu 3mo ago
If you make over $130k then you make enough that you can be worked 24/7 without violating a $15 minimum wage + 1.5x over 40 hours per week.

tlogan 3mo ago

[flagged]

toomuchtodo 3mo ago
Would’ve been better to spend that $1.8B on public services and forgo the 600 jobs. Lesson learned. US population and working age population will continue to decline into the future due to structural demographics. As labor supply declines, it’s an ideal time to work towards improved labor rights over the next several decades. Deaths outnumber births in ~21 states as of this comment, and will come for all states eventually. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680794 (citations) 69% of US employers report difficulty finding talent - https://www.staffingindustry.com/news/global-daily-news/69-of-us-employers-report-difficulty-finding-talent https://www.staffingindustry.com/news/global-daily-news/69-o... - March 18th, 2026 (“Talent scarcity has become a structural challenge for American employers,” Ger Doyle, regional president at Manpower North America, said in a press release. “With demand for skilled workers consistently outpacing supply, businesses need to rethink how they attract, develop, and retain talent.”) The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments) Dependency and depopulation? Confronting the consequences of a new demographic reality - https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-depopulation-confronting-the-consequences-of-a-new-demographic-reality https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-dep... - January 15th, 2025 (think in systems)
nitwit005 3mo ago
You have no opinion about the bill, but then clearly imply it'll be bad. Sure.
- tlogan 3mo ago
  Meaning, it creates one more hurdle for businesses. I think that is an objective statement. Is it bad? That depends on your point of view. If you are pro-business, then yes, the bill is bad. If you are not pro-business and you are pro-worker rights, then you will not see it as bad.

quadrifoliate 3mo ago

Lots of privilege in this thread showing. This is the equivalent of "what global warming, it was so cold today". Please remember that just because you aren't expected to have consistent unpaid after-hours comms doesn't mean that others don't. Bills like this would help a lot of people who are victims of "can you just take a look at this real quick" at 6pm. It does need to be at the country level though, otherwise employers will just play off states against each other.

nfw2 3mo ago
Most of the roles I've had involved irregular and long hours. In most cases, I've been happy to take these roles. The article isn't clear how exactly this is intended to work. I think no surprise hours that aren't recognized in the terms of employment makes sense. But also I think I should be able to agree to being available if I am willing to be. Remote Michigan tech workers already have enough trouble as tech companies insist on returning to office.
- idiotsecant 3mo ago
  This is simple. You're on call, you're paid to be on call. Anyone accepting anything different is encouraging this behaviour. Unionize and this goes away.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
- preg_match 3mo ago
  If long and irregular hours are expected, then those hours should be tracked and paid out at a rate. Companies absolutely abuse salary exemptions and it’s getting ridiculous. If you have to “clock in” at the exact same time every day, “clock out” at the exact same time every day, and are expected to work additional scheduled hours outside of work, you should be paid hourly and receive overtime. You are an hourly employee. Not a salary one. You might be called a salary employee. But no, you’re working as an hourly employee. If companies expect you to be on call, that’s great. Pay an on call hourly rate. Problem solved. But you can’t just take a salary employee, treat them like they work at McDonald’s and then pay a base bi weekly salary. That’s not okay IMO.

cactusplant7374 3mo ago

Michigan is becoming poorer relative to its neighboring states. Maybe not the right time for this?

al_borland 3mo ago

Where I work, in Michigan, people used to be compensated if they were called for on-call work. Then, probably 15 years ago, they decided to give everyone a little raise, based on how much on-call work they did in the previous year, then ended the extra payment for on-call. Anyone who was hired for, or moved into, a position that required on-call work got nothing and continues to get nothing. I used to get called a lot, when my boss also ran the critical incident team. These days, I don’t get called much, the there is always a looming threat. I miss the days when being done with work meant that I was actually done with work.

sokoloff 3mo ago
> Then, probably 15 years ago, they decided to give everyone a little raise, based on how much on-call work they did in the previous year, then ended the extra payment for on-call. Anyone who was hired for, or moved into, a position that required on-call work got nothing and continues to get nothing. If Alex was previously on-call from time to time and got a raise to account for that typical amount of on-call, it sounds like you think that's fair? (It does sound fair to me.) Then, Bailey is hired at the same exact pay as Alex and also has to occasionally be on-call. Is Bailey truly "getting nothing"? Is Alex's pay fair and Bailey's identical pay unfair? I don't think so. If you want to pass a law that requires employers to divide up pay differently than they currently do, that's totally fine; in some corner cases, it will result in a net pay increase for lower-paid employees.
- al_borland 3mo ago
  Over 15 years it all gets lost. When they made the change, I was on a team that didn’t do on-call, because we were 24x7, so our pay remained the same. Eventually I got a new role, also without on-call. One day the boss thought it would be a good idea if we start doing on-call support. There was no pay adjustment for this, no new job I applied for where on-call was part of the deal I signed up for. It just happened. It could be called an edge case, but when the on-call pay is built into the base salary, it creates the expectation that a person is never off the clock and no time is truly their own. It also removes the incentive to minimize on-call work.

roughly 3mo ago

There's a weird incuriosity in the responses here for a place that calls itself Hacker News. "This doesn't happen to me" is about the least interesting or useful response you could have to someone telling you something happens to them. Someone is telling you the world works differently for them than it does for you, which means you've got an opportunity to learn something new about the world and expand your model. Every good hack comes from understanding the world well enough to see the hack in the first place - someone telling you about their lived experience of the world is a gift.

tbrownaw 3mo ago
> Someone is telling you the world works differently for them than it does for you, which means you've got an opportunity to learn something new about the world and expand your model. ...than it does for you, which means there's an opportunity for someone to expend resources verifying and characterizing the claimed difference.
- darth_avocado 3mo ago
  It’s easy to dismiss something by saying “it’s not been my experience”. It would be a huge waste of time if every such claim requires expending resources verifying and characterizing the difference. There should be a higher bar for discourse on HN.
  - tbrownaw 3mo ago
    The comment I was replying to appears to be a call for unquestioning belief. Which is the far extreme in the opposite direction.
    - grayhatter 3mo ago
      No, it doesn't, or at the very least, that wasn't my read and I don't think that's a reasonable interpretation. The comment starts with the topic, shock at the lack of curiosity from a group happy to comment in the theme of news interesting to hackers, and concludes with an argument that someone sharing their life/experience is something valuable. IMO, the only reasonable argument one could take, is that roughly believes hackers should be curious, and that if you want to treat humans with the respect they deserve as individuals, you should default to trying to believe what they say, listening when they try to communicate, and avoid ignoring what they're trying to communicate just so you can interject something unrelated about yourself. I not only agree, but I'm glad someone took a moment to encourage treating others with respect.

throwaway85825 3mo ago

Companies that desire on call need to be willing to pay an hourly rate for 24 hours of possible labor.

gblargg 3mo ago
At least an ongoing retainer fee, plus paying for time spent dealing with comms.
- throwaway85825 3mo ago
  Lots of in office people aren't doing work 100% of the time, they still get paid because they could be asked to do something. Same goes for on call, just with a flipped percentage. Further for non fixed work schedules any shifts that aren't scheduled two weeks in advance should be paid overtime.
  - shimman 3mo ago
    Why is the onus on workers to make sure they are working 100.00% of the time? It's not their company, they aren't management. If you want them to cosplay as managers maybe pay them as such rather than trying to pit them amongst each other.
    - genewitch 3mo ago
      i can't figure out what some of the commentary here is borne from. "you're not working 100% of the time so it's ok if they ask you to work outside of normal hours" is sadistic.
      - gblargg 3mo ago
        I took parent to be arguing that because people get paid at the office even though they aren't working 100% of the time, the same logic would dictate being paid when not at the office. The percentage flip would just mean that they aren't 100% doing leisure activities.

gblargg 3mo ago

I'm fine if they want to give me extra work when I'm not on the job. I round up to the hour, so choose your after-hours emails wisely.

yamillove 3mo ago

One thing I wonder is how will this politician work an after hours meeting with the citizens. Will she not show up or will she tell her constituents that THEY need to do the meeting at HER working hours?

galleywest200 3mo ago
Citizens are not employees of politicians. Only the politician’s staffers are. Arguably the politician works for us so we can decide their working hours.
- yamillove 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago
    I think that you might have an easier time in the rest of your life if you start considering, among other things, the concept of "figure of speech."
    - yamillove 3mo ago
      Thanks

hintymad 3mo ago

That means tech companies won't hire engineers in Michigan if they are required to be oncall, as many such engineers rotate their oncall schedules?

lpolovets 3mo ago

I think stuff like this is much better settled with compensation than legislation. For example when I was an engineer 15-20 years ago, my friends would deprioritize jobs with lots of on-call needs, but would still take the jobs if they were exceptional in some way or the comp was especially good. Why can't we do that in most other job categories as well? I can think of a bunch of areas where this kind of bill would degrade people's experiences with businesses: - handoffs will suck. Someone's shift ends at 2pm and you take over. At 2:05 you realize you need to ask them if a client issue got resolved or if they did some important item on their task list. But now you're not allowed to. Lots of time will get wasted as a result. - scheduling will get slower. This would impact founders if it was in California! For example VC firms (like mine) have executive assistants, and the expectation is something like "work 7-8 hours a day, and check email a few times in the evening in case something pressing comes up." But if you can't ask your EA to do a quick email check a few times in the evening, the thing that could've been scheduled today for tomorrow will instead be scheduled tomorrow for the future. - if businesses need to hire more just to have a little more around the clock coverage, then prices go up for everyone. E.g. if 5% of work happens unpredictably between 5pm and 10pm, then either that work can get ignored until the next day (previous points), or someone can be hired to work 5pm-10pm -- but eventually that extra cost gets passed down to customers.

functionmouse 3mo ago
> I think stuff like this is much better settled with compensation than legislation. The only reason we get compensated at all is because of legislation. They'll pay us as little and work us as hard as they're legally and physically able to.
- matchbok3 3mo ago
  In exactly 0 of my hiring decisions, ever, was legislation a reason why someone is paid.
beAbU 3mo ago
The very first paragraph in TFA says: > ... rules on when and for what reason an employer could contact an employee outside of a normal work schedule. This is no blanket 'thou shalt not call thy employees after hours' law. All this is doing is preventing employers from effectively pulling a bait and switch, by implicitly expecting employees to be available 24/7 for whatever reason. If you've ever been in a situation where your boss just fucking calls you because of some asinine reason ("hey I just had an idea...) then you know how terrible it is. Nothing spoilt my weekends as much as a boss calling and I'm thinking "o shit prod is down" or whatever, and then it's just him asking on a delivery date for a feature because he's having drinks with the client now and they were asking. Now, if there is a requirement for after hours availability, it has to be stated in the contract, and the compensation must accordingly reflect this additional requirement. I think it's great this is happening.

giancarlostoro 3mo ago

How do bills like these work for jobs where you are literally on call for outages?

ThrowawayTestr 3mo ago
Then you're on the clock and by definition not after (your) hours.

oatmeal1 3mo ago

> But in general, should this bill become law in Michigan, an employer could not require an employee to access or respond to work-related matters outside of their assigned hours... Violations could be reported to the state's Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, with fines to the company and/or overtime pay to the employee among the possible results. It will be too easy for employers to say to the DOL the employee was not actually required to respond to the work-related matter when they told the employee they are expected to. Laws like these don't solve problems (bargaining power disparity caused by a variety of factors), they solve symptoms. It may not have a significant effect.

nunez 3mo ago

Getting a separate phone and phone number for work has been one of the biggest quality of life improvements for my work life balance. It's a small change in the macro, but doing this enabled me to (a) choose the device I want, (b) keep work stuff off of my personal phone, and, most importantly, (c) COMPLETELY disconnect from work when the day is done. This became necessary after COVID induced WFH forced work into the home and expectations around being "on" all of the time became more pervasive. That said, "Work Profile" is one of Android's best features, and I'd love for iOS to have something equivalent. It's not as good as a physical separation, but it's the next best thing.

elevation 3mo ago
A friend with an iPhone runs his a couple businesses with the Quo app (nee OpenPhone) which allows him to manage calls/sms for multiple business numbers from his personal phone while allowing him to automatically disable ringing after 5pm when he leaves the office to be a family man. My problem is that my customers prefer to reach me over iMessage, and porting my number to any "business phone in an app" means I'd be downgrading to unreliable SMS in a green bubble. So if I want to separate work/personal use, I'd need to carry a second iPhone.

_DeadFred_ 3mo ago

I want a bill that prevents employees from using their phones at all for work cases. I've seen people who can barely afford their smart phone having to use it for work and then dropping it/breaking it where replacing it is a weeks salary. Companies should be required to provide the tools needed, and that should include phone if a phone app is required to be used as part of the job. I'd say a replacement guarantee could work, but these sorts of places will fire someone if they requested such a guaranty be fulfilled so the only way is total ban.

SE5pc3JhY2lzdA 3mo ago

I suppose if the position requires it, like being on call, companies will just avoid Michigan workers and either out source, or hire remotely in another state. I'm originally from Michigan and have worked at lots of different jobs. I rarely ever was required to respond after hours, and if I did, it was part of my job (and explained to me in detail when I accepted the position). Does this apply to Doctors and Nurses?

bob1029 3mo ago

I've worked for more than one small company that has an unstated policy to not hire employees who live in CA or NY. It sounds like MI might wind up on that list. I know of certain employees who reside in that state right now who are pulling ridiculous hours just to keep the business alive. None of them were forced into it or are otherwise unhappy with the circumstances they find themselves in. I've had many opportunities to re-enter the W2 labor pool and decided to stay out in the high seas. Many moons ago, when I signed up to work at Samsung Austin Semiconductor they told me I might be responsible for odd hours. I agreed to this and had a pager strapped to my body until the day I quit the job 3 years later. No one seems to get weird about a doctor-style pager ripping employees out of slumber at 2am. The only time I got a break from the pager is when I was on a 777 on my way to South Korea. Then I got a new kind of pager when I arrived. Somehow teams messages and outlook are super evil by comparison to this.

whatever1 3mo ago

In America the definition of at will employment is so broad that employee exploitation is not covered. Technically you sign you will work at least 40 hours per week. So 120 hours is fine by the law. And if you die at work, hey it was your choice. Now on the opposite side, I also understand that there can be a handful of cases in a year where you really need to work outside the work hours, law should not be making businesses so inflexible that they are doomed to fail.