EDITORIAL: Right to disconnect laws threaten flexibility

Most of us have been on the receiving end of an after-hours call, text or email from the boss at some point in our careers.

And, generally, it’s not such a big deal.

The vast majority of employers understand that it’s important to allow workers to switch off when they leave the office.

The vast majority of employees understand that sometimes, emergencies necessitating after-hours contact arise.

And so both sides have, for the most part, just got on with it. When the boss calls after-hours, it’s usually for a good reason.

After all, flexibility works both ways.

More than ever before, workers are demanding — and being granted — freedom in the way they perform their jobs.

In the not-so-distant past, it was an expectation of most workplaces that workers would front up to the office each and every day.

That’s no longer the case. Technology has freed many of us from the rigid confines of the nine-to-five workday.

Remote and hybrid work arrangements are now commonplace, in a movement that was accelerated through the COVID pandemic.

For the most part, employers embraced it, acknowledging that it made for a happier and more engaged workforce.

Now having the freedom to arrange your workday to be able to pick up the kids from school or perform other life tasks is normal. It’s had an enormously positive impact on our productivity, in particular by encouraging parents back into the workforce.

The flip side is that occasionally, we may be asked to attend to a work responsibility while we’re off the clock. Answer a query from the boss, or read the odd email out of hours.

The Albanese Government’s right-to-disconnect legislation, which came into effect today, has severed that two-way flow.

Under the new rules, employees have the right not to “monitor, read or respond to contact or attempted contact outside their working hours, unless their refusal is unreasonable”.

The problem is that what constitutes “unreasonable” is yet to be tested. And those who are likely to be doing the testing are unions, not known for their reasonableness. Some unions will no doubt seek to exploit these new provisions, forcing cases to the Fair Work Commission.

Incredibly, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has claimed that right-to-disconnect provisions will actually increase productivity, “because when people are actually loyal to their employer and focused on what they should be doing, and not being distracted 24 hours a day but focused on eight hours a day … you’ll get a more productive workforce”.

It’s a nice fantasy. But the reality is likely to be much different.

It may mean that businesses’ only options are to pay staff on-call allowances or hire more staff to do not a great deal of work. Big businesses might be able to absorb the hit. Smaller or struggling businesses will not.

It’s a high price to pay for a solution no one asked for.

Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by WAN Editor Christopher Dore.